Conflicting meta packages in debian

[Raghavendra D Prabhu]

I noticed this in debian control file of 5.5/5.6

5.5
============
Package: percona-server-server
Section: database
Architecture: any
Depends: percona-server-server-5.5, ${misc:Depends}
Description: Percona Server database server
 (metapackage depending on the latest version)
 This is an empty package that depends on the current "best" version of
 percona-server-server (currently percona-server-server-5.5), as determined
 by the Percona Server maintainers. Install this package if in doubt
 about which Percona Server version you need. That will install the version
 recommended by the package maintainers.
 .
 Percona Server is a fast, stable and true multi-user, multi-threaded SQL
 database server. SQL (Structured Query Language) is the most popular database
 query language in the world. The main goals of Percona Server are speed,
 robustness and ease of use.

Package: percona-server-client
Section: database
Architecture: any
Depends: percona-server-client-5.5, ${misc:Depends}
Description: Percona Server database client
 (metapackage depending on the latest version)
 This is an empty package that depends on the current "best" version of
 percona-server-client (currently percona-server-client-5.5), as determined
 by the Percona Server maintainers. Install this package if in doubt
 about which Percona Server version you want, as this is the one we consider
 to be in the best shape.

5.6
=================

Package: percona-server-server
Section: database
Architecture: any
Depends: percona-server-server-5.6, ${misc:Depends}
Description: Percona Server database server
 (metapackage depending on the latest version)
 This is an empty package that depends on the current "best" version of
 percona-server-server (currently percona-server-server-5.6), as determined
 by the Percona Server maintainers. Install this package if in doubt
 about which Percona Server version you need. That will install the version
 recommended by the package maintainers.
 .
 Percona Server is a fast, stable and true multi-user, multi-threaded SQL
 database server. SQL (Structured Query Language) is the most popular database
 query language in the world. The main goals of Percona Server are speed,
 robustness and ease of use.

Package: percona-server-client
Section: database
Architecture: any
Depends: percona-server-client-5.6, ${misc:Depends}
Description: Percona Server database client
 (metapackage depending on the latest version)
 This is an empty package that depends on the current "best" version of
 percona-server-client (currently percona-server-client-5.6), as determined
 by the Percona Server maintainers. Install this package if in doubt
 about which Percona Server version you want, as this is the one we consider
 to be in the best shape.

 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

 So, as you can see they conflict in name. Needs to be
 disambiguated wrt. name. (possibly with -5.5/5.6 suffixes or
 removed since with suffix they are identical to original package)

[Valerii Kravchuk (valerii-kravchuk)]

This is easy to check:

[openxs@chief percona-5.6]$ grep -rn "Description: Percona Server database client" build-ps/debian/*
build-ps/debian/control:39:Description: Percona Server database client library
build-ps/debian/control:132:Description: Percona Server database client binaries
build-ps/debian/control:208:Description: Percona Server database client
[openxs@chief percona-5.6]$ cd ../percona-5.5
[openxs@chief percona-5.5]$ grep -rn "Description: Percona Server database client" build-ps/debian/*
build-ps/debian/control:38:Description: Percona Server database client library
build-ps/debian/control:128:Description: Percona Server database client binaries
build-ps/debian/control:200:Description: Percona Server database client
...

[Tomislav Plavcic (tplavcic)]

Probably the best solution would be to remove those two packages from version 5.5 if we recommend 5.6 version (since we have only one repository and both versions are in it).
If I look at the apt repository I get only the one which depends on 5.6 version, although both are created.
Renaming with suffix doesn't make sense because those packages only depend on their real counterparts and not also on some other packages.
I'm not sure if there can be any side effects if we change this?

This is seen when querying main apt repository:
vagrant@ubuntu1404-64:~$ sudo apt-cache show percona-server-server
Package: percona-server-server
Source: percona-server-5.6
Version: 5.6.17-65.0-587.trusty
Architecture: amd64
Maintainer: Percona Server Development Team <email address hidden>
Installed-Size: 56
Depends: percona-server-server-5.6
Homepage: http://www.percona.com/software/percona-server/
Priority: extra
Section: database
Filename: pool/main/p/percona-server-5.6/percona-server-server_5.6.17-65.0-587.trusty_amd64.deb
...
Description: Percona Server database server
 (metapackage depending on the latest version)
 This is an empty package that depends on the current "best" version of
 percona-server-server (currently percona-server-server-5.6), as determined
 by the Percona Server maintainers. Install this package if in doubt
 about which Percona Server version you need. That will install the version
 recommended by the package maintainers.

[Roel Van de Paar (roel11)]

Should any package names change as a result of fixing this, please ping me via email.

[Tomislav Plavcic (tplavcic)]

PR: https://github.com/percona/percona-server/pull/185

[Shahriyar Rzayev (rzayev-sehriyar)]

Percona now uses JIRA for bug reports so this bug report is migrated to: https://jira.percona.com/browse/PS-1487