Fedora (Linux) is Destroying it self

[Seth Vidal]

On Tue, 12 May 2009, Bryn M. Reeves wrote:

> On Tue, 2009-05-12 at 12:26 +0200, Michael Nielsen wrote:
>> It is a big disadvantage when testing, because the current scheme
>> prevents having Firefox-2 and Firefox-3 (apache-1.3, apache-2.2 etc)
>> installed, under package management because they contain files that
>> conflict, similarly with 64 bit systems, where you need to install 32bit
>> compatability software, they usually conflict, due to irrelevant
>> documentation files conflicting.
>
> Not true; when there are identical files shared between two packages
> (e.g. due to multilib) RPM does not report a conflict (the files in the
> file system are reference counted and are only unlinked when the last
> package is removed from the system).
>
> E.g.:
>
> # rpm --qf="%{name}-%{version}-%{release}.%{arch}\n"
> -qf /usr/share/doc/device-mapper-1.02.28/README
> device-mapper-1.02.28-2.el5.i386
> device-mapper-1.02.28-2.el5.x86_64

That's not a correct example.

The above example is of multilib files, not of conflicting files.

rpm does track conflicts and it does keep you from installing if you have 
actually conflicting files.

a file conflict is two pkgs owning the same file where the file is not:
  1. identical between the two pkgs
  2. not a 64bit or 32bit binary when the other file is the matching 64bit 
or 32bit binary.

-sv