> You probably want to look inside the control archives rather than the
> data archives:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deb_%28file_format%29
>
> If both control archive files are using a package name of
> "master-pdf-editor", you can try Stefan's suggestion of renaming one
> and seeing if they'll then coinstall.
Exactly: the immediate problem you're encountering is that the package
names themselves (regardless of the files they contain) collide.
This info is the `control` part of the .deb archive.
The way I do it is to use Emacs to open the `foo.deb` file.
This should show you something like:
M Mode Size Date&time Filename
- ---------- ------ ---------------- ----------------
-rw-r--r-- 4 2021-03-01 12:23 debian-binary
-rw-r--r-- 1128 2021-03-01 12:23 control.tar.xz
-rw-r--r-- 615380 2021-03-01 12:23 data.tar.xz
- ---------- ------ ---------------- ----------------
616512 3 files
where the `data.tar.xz` part contains the actual files and
`control.tar.xz` is the part you want to modify.
So you select the `control.tar.xz` which itself will look somewhat
similar and will contain a `control` which you can open and in which
you'll find presumably something like:
Package: master-pdf-editor
[...]
followed by other kinds of metainfo about the package. Just edit that
first line (e.g. by adding a `4` or `5`), then do `C-x C-s` to save this
`control` back into `control.tar.xz`, then kill this buffer with `C-x
k RET`, then save the new `control.tar.xz` back into the actual foo.deb
file with `C-x C-s`.
Then retry to install those debs with:
dpkg --install foo.deb
I recommend you do those modifications on a copy of the file, just so
its easier to recover from mistakes.
Stefan
