pidgin obsoleting itself

[Michael Schwendt]

On Wed, 9 Jun 2010 14:06:48 +0400, Peter wrote:

> 2010/6/9 Chen Lei:
> 
> > But in this case, the obsoletes seems excessive, since
> > pidgin-evolution already depends on pidgin.  If pidgin-evolution don't
> > depend on pidgin, the obsoletes is a must, without it pidgin will be
> > replaced by pidgin-evolution.
> 
> If it pidgin-evolution was previously in main package, then this
> obsoletes is required. W/o this requires users may suffer from missing
> functionality after upgrade.
> 
> Briefly:
> 
> * We need to split off p.-e, from pidgin
> * We need to install both of them while upgrading (Obsoletes in
> pidgin-evo) in order not to loose functionality.
> * We need to not erase main pidgin (Obsoletes in pidgin)

I wonder who's spreading theories like that? It's not the first time
this has come up in the past weeks. Most recently affected was nagios.

You _cannot_ add _optional_ packages to a user's installation _without_
proper dependencies somewhere else. Attempts at trying to do that with
Obsoletes are invasive and prone to getting it completely wrong.