Re: sub-pakage to replace a file in the main package

[Edgar Fuß <ef%math.uni-bonn.de@localhost>]

> First, file a bug with upstream.
I'm afraid that's a waste of time.

> because it is very awkward to package.
If you want to see something that's *really* awkward to package, take a look 
at Icinga Web 2 (net/icingaweb2, there's a rant of mine in Makefile).

> You might see what Debian and FC packages do.
Debian depends on libusb.

> But as I looked into this, I bet they just require usb.
Yes.

> Looking at the build files, it seems upstream has a notion of building
> with usb support or not, and doesn't really have notion of a separate
> install for usb drivers.  So they'd say we are doing it wrong.
Yes.

> Sizewise, libusb1/libusb-compat is only 350K
With or without libusb1 proper?

> and the USB drivers are 490K.
They'll even grow a bit in case upstream cares about my Q*-based Masterguard 
driver.

> Therefore, we could consider just requiring usb in ups-nut, and dropping
> the ups-nut-usb package.
We might regret that in case upstream switches to libusb9-warp-ng which 
requires udev, devfs, dbus and systemd.

> That will make a few people with serial-only UPS units have to have 
> the libusb1 package installed.
I would partly understand people arguing that a UPS is nothing you would 
like to depend on new-fangled things like USB.

> Are there platforms where libusb is not going to build
No idea.


But what about my original question? Does pkgsrc provide such a thing? 
How awkward does my idea of linking files in INSTALL/DEINSTALL sound?