[gobolinux-users] Solution for situation when more programs provide same file

[Hisham Muhammad]

On 7/2/07, Isaac Dupree <isaacdupree at charter.net> wrote:
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> hisham.hm at gmail.com wrote:
> >> (If conflicts include multiple versions of the same program, this might
> >> get ugly...)
> >
> > No, they don't. Different versions are expected to often provide the
> > same file, so one overwriting the other is not considered a conflict,
> > but an upgrade/downgrade.
>
> That makes sense... for the existing behavior of "conflicts".  Does it
> solve the problem at the beginning of the thread: you find a broken link
> and want to replace it with a working one.  For that purpose, would it
> be important to have links to other versions of the symlinked program
> (or multiple versions of _each_ alternative) in case they still have
> such a file?

I don't think so. A script that attempted to repair the link could
start by looking if there are other versions of the broken link's
target program around, and then working through the conflict links.

> > This gets me thinking that this whole discussion would
> > benefit by being backed with numbers. I wonder how many conflicts
> > there are in real-world systems and which they are.
>
> Good question.  A conflict is announced when two different programs are
> Symlinked in order, that both have the same file... It is sort of a
> conflict for any non-directory /Programs/name/version/**
> for any two files that have the same path (the whole ** part), are in a
> subdirectory that would be symlinked, and with different program "name".
>  Active conflicts are the subset of those where "version" is only
> "Current".  Does that seem about right?  I think I can find all those
> conflicts on my system with some scripting-fu :)

Yes, that seems right. If you get around to do it, post your findings
and the script so we can run it in other machines and get some more
data points.

-- Hisham