how to resolve package file conflicts?

[Andrew Schulman]

>> I'm preparing two packages, unison and unison-gtk2, which offer
>> conflicting
>> versions of /usr/bin/unison.exe -- the first a text-mode client, the
>> second a GTK2 client.  How should I address this?  Is there a
>> mechanism in the packaging system for identifying or resolving file
>> conflicts?
>
> Hmm. Any relation to the author of the same name?

Nope, none that I'm aware of.

> You can resolve this with pre- and post- install (shell) scripts.

Yes, that might help.

> How would you resolve this, with any other packaging system? Without a
> package system, i.e. from source?
> Why do the text & gtk version have to have  the same name, in the same
> place?

That's just the way the source package does it-- you can 'make UISTYLE=text'
or 'make UISTYLE=gtk2' and both give unison.exe.  But you're right, of
course I can change the names.
 
> Perhaps a better solution, is to solve this in the binary, itself.
> Emacs does this with a layer, which checks if it is run in a console, or
> on X Window.

Sure, that would work.  Maybe just a shell wrapper that checks if DISPLAY is
set and runs either unison-text.exe or unison-gtk2.exe.

> Again, both the text & gtk binaries can be the same binary.

I don't think I want to go that far in modifying the source, especially
since it's written in OCaml, which I don't know and have no other need to
learn.  But a shell wrapper would take care of it.

Thanks,
Andrew.