Package alternatives?

[Andreas Heinlein]

Am 25.05.2011 09:02, schrieb Steffen Grunewald:
> We're in the process of replacing some packages ("A") by specially built 
> ones ("B"), which will be named slightly differently, to avoid confusion.
> For FAI this means that we want to
> "install package B if it already exists, otherwise use A".
> How can this be achieved?
>
> Cheers,
>  Steffen
>

We do that by using a repository of our own. To make sure packages from
your own repository are preferred over "official" ones from other repos,
you can use apt-pinning. Using different names makes things more
difficult, however, since your packages would not replace the official
ones automatically, not even when using a "Replaces:" field in the
custom package. You would have to create at least empty transitional
packages in the repo to make aptitude install your custom packages
instead. We chose to keep the names, also to avoid breaking any
dependencies, and give a meaningful version number instead (i.e. offical
package "1.4-1", our package "1.4-1.special1").

Andreas