Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2020 23:35:31 -0500
From: Winston Weinert <winston@ml1.net>
To: ~alpine/users@lists.alpinelinux.org
Subject: How to address apk file conflicts?
Message-ID: <20200804043531.ltdodl7vps2cywns@ml1.net>
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Sometimes I encounter an alpine box with apk errors:

/ # apk add nethack
(1/1) Installing nethack (3.6.6-r0)
Executing busybox-1.31.1-r16.trigger
1 error; 28 MiB in 23 packages

My usual approach to fixing these issues is to run "apk
fix". Sometimes it fixes it, other times it isn't fixable due to a
file conflict:

/ # apk fix
(1/1) Reinstalling perl-doc (5.30.3-r0)
ERROR: perl-doc-5.30.3-r0: trying to overwrite usr/share/man/man3/Data::Dumper.3pm.gz owned by perl-data-dumper-doc-2.173-r3.
1 error; 23 MiB in 19 packages

In a situation such as the above, my solution is to delete one of the
affected packages, and report the conflict to
https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/issues

Is there a better recourse than deleting one of the conflicting
packages? Is there a mechanism in apk to manually resolve file
conflicts?

Unfortunately things like "abuild -r" and ansible's apk module will
fail when apk fails even if the overall operation was a success.

Happy apk-ing,
Winston Weinert
winny.tech