Where to report a bug?

[Keith]

On 4/9/23 9:26 PM, Robert Heller wrote:
> At Sun, 9 Apr 2023 16:26:21 -0500 "Ubuntu user technical support,? not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:
> 
>>
>> On 4/9/23 2:37 PM, Robert Heller wrote:
>>> I need to report a bug (which I thought I reported years ago).
>>>
>>> It is just a packaging error:
>>>
>>> For some reason, installing bison++ causes bison to be removed (and vice
>>> versa). This is not really necessary -- bison++ does not actually conflict
>>> eith bison. The two packages are completely independent. Yes, from some points
>>> of view they can be said to be replacements of each other, but they are
>>> different and it does make sense to have both installed at the same time.
>>>
>>
>> Here's your bug report
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bison++/+bug/1607408
>>
>> The reason there's a conflict is due to both bison and bison++ supplying
>> /usr/bin/bison, which is a filename collision. AIUI, bison++ is based on
>> a older version of bison so it makes sense that it has a /usr/bin/bison
>> that's different from the one supplied by the bison package.
> 
> bison++ supplies /usr/bin/bison++, NOT /usr/bin/bison.  There aren't any
> actual file conflicts.

Yes, there is. You can confirm this for yourself.
$ apt download bison
$ apt download bison++
These commands  will download the deb packages from the repos to the 
current working directory.

$ dpkg-deb -c bison__2%3a3.8.2+dfsg-1build1_amd64.deb |grep bin
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2022-03-23 04:43 ./usr/bin/
-rwxr-xr-x root/root    504624 2022-03-23 04:43 ./usr/bin/bison
-rwxr-xr-x root/root      4214 2022-03-23 04:43 ./usr/bin/bison.yacc

$ dpkg-deb -c bison++_1.21.11-5_amd64.deb |grep bin
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2021-10-24 01:32 ./usr/bin/
-rwxr-xr-x root/root     89176 2021-10-24 01:32 ./usr/bin/bison
-rwxr-xr-x root/root     89176 2021-10-24 01:32 ./usr/bin/bison++
-rwxr-xr-x root/root        30 2021-10-24 01:32 ./usr/bin/bison++.yacc

The bison executable in the bison package is 504624 bytes while the one 
in the bison++ package is 89176 bytes. They're different executables 
with the same name, which is a filename collision and which is why the 
bison++ package conflicts with the bison one.

Now the bison executable in the bison++ package is byte-for-byte 
identical with the bison++ executable. I don't know why it's provided as 
an executable and not as a symbolic link, but it isn't and that's the 
reason why the packages conflict.

> 
>>
>> Unlikely to get traction with Ubuntu bug tracker since the package lives
>> upstream in Debian and also conflicts with the bison package there too.
>> Looking at its changelog it seems to be in maintenance mode and its
>> development appears to have halted in the mid-90's.
>>
> 
> I guess I will need to download the sources for both packages and fix them
> myself.  (Unless there is a "trick" to tell apt to ignore the conflict.)
> 
There's the "--force-conflicts" option for dpkg that will install a 
package despite its conflicting with another and overwriting the other's 
files. However, apt will complain about broken packages installed and 
likely won't allow any changes to the package database until the 
situation is fixed.

You wouldn't need to build both packages from source, just one. You 
could install the regular bison package from the main repo and then 
install bison++ to /usr/local. The bison executable from bison++ would 
be installed to /usr/local/bin and wouldn't conflict with the one from 
the bison package which would be in /usr/bin, You'd still want to rename 
or remove /usr/local/bin/bison because it would be found first in $PATH, 
but it wouldn't conflict upon installation.

-- 
Keith