x86-64 rawhide update obnoxiousness

[Michal Jaegermann]

On Mon, Oct 17, 2005 at 08:51:12PM +0100, Paul Jakma wrote:
> 
> Another possibility: Reference count the files. Last package 
> uninstalled removes the file.

That is exactly what to me looks like something sane in the whole
context.  Similar to how 'unlink' works.  Files are removed only
when the last reference is gone.  It appears that something of that
sort already happens for directories but maybe I am misinterpreting
some observations.

Obviously you are still left with cases, like mentioned /bin/tcsh,
where you have really different files but with the same name and you
install both "owner" packages.  That sounds like a bug although it
appears that one can have some "messy rules".  Say, in x86_64/i386
situation x86_64 is "preferred" and a file from that architecture
cannot be replaced with another variant.  So even if you had
tcsh.x86_64 and tcsh.i386 packages installed and you managed somehow
to remove the first one then you are left with x86_64 executables in
/bin/tcsh.  Not that I like such contortions very much, and cleaning
that up would be much preferred,  but with a quick peek on my
systems I did not notice cases where this would really apply.
Maybe you cannot do that anymore?

> But that doesnt allow higher-level 
> package management systems to spot such dependencies though.

How that would be really different?

   Michal