[Techtalk] package hell: Related .deb question

[Wim De Smet]

On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 5:16 PM, Elwing <elwing at elwing.org> wrote:
> On May 7, 2008, at 11:10 AM, Figaro wrote:
>
>  > I have a series of programs that occasionally need to be updated (cad
>  > and structural-sim softwares). Obviously they are locally installed,
>  > they are either .deb or .deb that I build from .rpm's using the alien
>  > program.
>  > What I would love to be able to do would be add them to the apt-cache
>  > list somehow for simple package update.
>  > At present I only know how to use dpkg -i /some/dir/my/
>  > super.i386.deb to
>  > install them. Which always wipes out the license files and often
>  > causes
>  > much grief for me with the IT group and vendors to get new license
>  > codes
>  >  (assuming one can convince both "IT" and the vendor my story is
>  > valid).
>  > Anyway, does anyone here have an idea how to easily do this?
>  > Thank you,
>  You can use a local repository (http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/repository-howto/repository-howto
>  ) , but I believe (and I may be wrong) that ultimately, apt-get still
>  runs dpkg -i and you may still lose your information.  I'm not sure
>  how apt treats configuration information on local repositories.
>

You are not wrong: apt simply makes sure all dependencies are
fulfilled before installing a package, but then it just runs dpkg to
install it.

The way this normally works with license files and the like is that
they are marked in the package as special files (configuration files)
that can't be overwritten without the user's permission. Apparently
dpkg can't figure out from the selfbuilt packages that the license
files are config files and just overwrites as if they are a program
binary that needs to be upgraded.

That's about as far as my knowledge of a debian package goes
unfortunately and fixing it of course depends on where you got it and
how it was built.

greets,
Wim