On 03/30/2012 02:40 PM, Darrell Anderson wrote:
Installing the same files from two different packages might seem inefficient, but does not break anything. The breakage occurs when the package manager removes files blindly. Seems like the Arch package manager default settings are more restrictive than other package managers by not letting the installation proceed without using the --force parameter. :) Not bad or good, just more restrictive. To me, the removal end is more important.
Darrell
I agree and I cuss pacman every once in a while for it. It is more restrictive and it does a very good job. I just wish it was smart enough to:
if diff pkg1/file.x pkg2/file.x; then install the darn thing fi
But.. then you screw up (or complicate) the package manager database regarding who owns what on the system. I think this is where other package managers are smarter than pacman. Their package databases seem to be able to do this on the fly while pacman doesn't. Because in the above example, you would need to expand it to:
if diff pkg1/file.x pkg2/file.x; then install the darn thing update_pkgmgr_db(pkg2/file.x, owned by pkg2) update_pkgmgr_db(pkg1/file.x, owned by pkg2) fi