In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you write: >Joey Hess wrote: >> I'd say installing debhelper 1.2.28 with --force-conflicts is a _very_ bad >> idea. > >Unfortunatly, it looks like the current version of dpkg has >--force-overwrite (which is what I meant to say above) enabled by default. >And so anyone who ran dselect in the past 24 hours and upgraded from >unstable has probably beeen bitten by this bad package.
My understanding of dpkg/dselect/apt-get isn't extremely good, but anyway: I have noticed this behaviour, too. However, at the time, I assumed the apt-get forced the file to be overwritten because the package I was installing was required/base (ldso from memory, but this problem has already been fixed). Now I am not so sure. Can you be certain that dselect doesn't give dpkg the --force-overwrite option? My versions of dpkg claim that --force-overwrite isn't on be default (otherwise it should have [*] after it): dpkg forcing options - control behaviour when problems found: warn but continue: --force-<thing>,<thing>,... stop with error: --refuse-<thing>,<thing>,... | --no-force-<thing>,... Forcing things: auto-select [*] (De)select packages to install (remove) them dowgrade [*] Replace a package with a lower version configure-any Configure any package which may help this one hold Process incidental packages even when on hold bad-path PATH is missing important programs, problems likely not-root Try to (de)install things even when not root overwrite Overwrite a file from one package with another overwrite-diverted Overwrite a diverted file with an undiverted version depends-version [!] Turn dependency version problems into warnings depends [!] Turn all dependency problems into warnings conflicts [!] Allow installation of conflicting packages architecture [!] Process even packages with wrong architecture overwrite-dir [!] Overwrite one package's directory with another's file remove-reinstreq [!] Remove packages which require installation remove-essential [!] Remove an essential package WARNING - use of options marked [!] can seriously damage your installation. Forcing options marked [*] are enabled by default.