File Overwrite Errors

What it means

This checks for file overwrite errors that occur when one package tries to install a file that is owned by a different package.

How it works

  1. Calculate from a recent Contents file a list of pairs of packages that share at least one file.
  2. Restrict the list obtained in (1) to those pairs of packages that are co-installable according to dose-debcheck.
  3. Try installation of every pair of packages remaining after step (2) in a fresh chroot.

Usually I do these checks for sid on amd64, in times of preparation of a release I might also check testing. There is a more detailed documentation on how this works.

Filing bugs

Detected problems are filed as bugs, usually against both offending packages with severity Serious, with the list of files that are common to both packages according to the Contents file. Bugs (both bugs that I have filed as result of my script, and bugs that have been reported by others and that I have reproduced with my script) carry a usertag dose-file-overwrite for the user debian-qa@lists.debian.org.

Related checks

Note that piuparts does much more extensive tests of package installation and removal, and checks for different kinds of problems that may occur. One of the many tests done by piuparts now uses dose-debcheck to generate test candidates following the first two steps described above. Some categories of bugs are found by piuparts this way:

Further Reading