Aaron Griffin wrote:
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 2:45 PM, David C. Rankin <drankinatty@suddenlinkmail.com> wrote:
checking package integrity... (12/12) checking for file conflicts [#############################################] 100% error: could not prepare transaction error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files) ttf-dejavu: /usr/share/fonts/TTF/DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf exists in filesystem ttf-dejavu: /usr/share/fonts/TTF/DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf exists in filesystem ttf-dejavu: /usr/share/fonts/TTF/DejaVuSans-ExtraLight.ttf exists in filesystem <snip - remaining dejavu variants> Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.
And "Yes", DejaVu fonts did exist in /usr/share/fonts/TTF softlinked to /usr/share/fonts/truetype, but why does pacman care? If the same font already exists in a directory, that shouldn't cause the install to blow up -- should it?
pacman cares because pacman will try it's hardest to never ever break your system unless you say so. If pacman has no knowledge of files in your system, it'd be amazingly stupid to blindly overwrite them. What happens if I wrote a big long OOo document and saved it (stupidly) as /usr/bin/mydoc and then pacman decided to install an app named "mydoc". Poof, lost my work.
I know the above is a contrived example, but it serves to illustrate the point: pacman is not in control of your system. You are. Pacman will never say "I know better than you, so I'll just replace this with what I think it should be". Instead it will say "woah woah woah... you did something I don't understand. You deal with it and tell me when you figured it out"
That really was a really good "contrived" example, but it makes sense. pacman is coded to be conservative and doesn't have and way of checking whether what it is overwriting is a font file or something else and since it isn't a config file there isn't a md5 hash comparison done to determine whether to overwrite or install as .pacnew. So in this case pacman just balked at installing the font, issued the warnings and quit. Now I (at least think I) understand. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com