Installation of neofetch fails as already included in armbian-config package- potentially confusing to new users- not sure where Package file for armbian-config is

[jayenn]

Installed 24.8.4 on OrangePi Zero2. Assumed I would need to install neofetch to launch it, so didn't even try to run it before going straight to 'apt install neofetch'. On attempting to install, I saw the following:

Quote

dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/neofetch_7.1.0-4_all.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite '/usr/bin/neofetch', which is also in package armbian-config 24.11.1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/neofetch_7.1.0-4_all.deb

Reason is that armbian-config package includes /usr/bin/neofetch.

 

To avoid confusion for new users, it seems like it would be good to either have armbian-config depend on neofetch instead of including the bash script that that package includes*, or have the Package file for armbian-config lock out the installation of neofetch (I think the Provides, Replaces, and Conflicts directives might be needed for that). I had a look around the https://github.com/armbian/configng and https://github.com/armbian/config repos, but couldn't spot where the Package file is/is generated. Could someone point me in the right direction as to where that would be populated?

 

* I can only imagine that it's kept as part of the Armbian armbian-config package to ease addition of new devices before they are added upstream and that filters down to the Ubuntu/Debian stable distributions

Edited November 15 by jayenn

[Igor]

On 11/15/2024 at 9:48 AM, jayenn said:

Reason is that armbian-config package includes /usr/bin/neofetch.

Yes, we should probably add REPLACE: neofetch to the control file. 

 

On 11/15/2024 at 9:48 AM, jayenn said:

I can only imagine that it's kept as part of the Armbian armbian-config package to ease addition of new devices before they are added upstream and that filters down to the Ubuntu/Debian stable distributions

 

Well, there are several reasons for this:
- we are patching neofetch on our own to add Armbian branding. As Neofetch is not maintained anymore, we can't add Armbian normal / official ways by opening a PR at their GH

- we would like to switch to fastfetch but this has to be resolved first https://armbian.atlassian.net/browse/AR-2336 (we have extreme lack of hands since ever as we focus into kernel space hard problems, so there is no way to proceed on this)

- during the switch to new generation of armbian-config there are many things to tackle and this (known problem) simply live somewhere in backlog

 

This is how this transition is made and we could probably remove this double packaging to make it easier. We already pack it at Armbian config repo https://github.com/armbian/configng

https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/main/lib/functions/compilation/packages/armbian-config-deb.sh