[aur-general] Handling of virtual packages

[David Phillips]

On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 09:19:10AM +0200, Martin Kühne via aur-general wrote: 
>
> It is also a good idea to use conflicts=() to prevent packages from
> providing the same thing from being installed.

I'd clarify this by saying that if two packages have conflicting files,
pacman will still not allow the installation of both at the same time
(without the force flag). The conflicts array is still definitely the
right way to go, however. There could be a valid case for installing
two packages that provide the same thing if they do not conflict
on the filesystem.

Another key purpose of the conflicts array is to facilitate switching
between the two packages. If A depends on X and Y provides X, then
without the conficts array set, switching to Y would require separate
actions of removal of X and installation of Y. But the removal of X
is (near) impossible because A depends on X. With Y's conflicts array
containing X, installing Y will offer to replace X with Y in one shot.


Cheers
David