Package alternatives?

[Andreas Heinlein]

Am 25.05.2011 09:10, schrieb Henning Sprang:
>
> Hi,
> if you build the B packages yourself, let them provide the name of A.
> I didnt do packaging a while but it is possible that package a provides b.
>
> Not sure how to achieve the right priority, though.
> Maybe let the new repository have higher priority in apt pinning?
>
>
Like I wrote, this also will not work. Any "Provides:" or "Replaces:"
field will help satisfying dependencies, but it will not make apt(itude)
install your package instead of A automatically - not even with Priority
>1000 in apt-pinning AFAIK.

Debian achieves this using transitional dummy packages, and I am pretty
sure there is no other way (apart from doing things manually in a
script, of course).

Andreas