Matt Zimmerman wrote: > > Why does it think rsh-client is a virtual package? > > It is a mixed virtual package. There is a real package rsh-client, but also > several other packages provide rsh-client (apt-cache showpkg rsh-client).
Aha! Interesting. Since I *knew* that rsh-client was a real package I never even considered that other packages would provide it as a virtual package. I never even looked. > This may be a false positive, since you should not need an alternative for > mixed virtual packages. Policy Manual section "2.3.5 Virtual packages" says nothing about mixed virtual packages. Googling around I find reference to the Debian Packaging Manual http://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals#devref which is no longer available as such. Is there any place in particular I could learn more about the details of mixed virtual packages? Having both real and virtual packages seems to create a dilemma for the tools. How common is this? How accepted are mixed virtual packages? They appear to be an alternative with an infinitely high priority. In this case I want the "real" rsh-client package and not one of the virtuals such as ssh. I also have ssh installed. Therefore I do not want to list this as "ssh | rsh-client" because that would not be the right thing. Therefore I will declare this to be a false positive since there is a real package rsh-client it should not create a warning. Thanks! Bob
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