Ubuntu/Debian packages should be made more robust/informative

(Actually affects some earlier packages, not just 5.4.0.1)

Currently, on my Ubuntu system, if I add the appropriate line to /etc/apt/sources.list (apt.nuxeo.org) and I search for Nuxeo packages, I see:

$ apt-cache search nuxeo
nuxeo-dam-jboss - Nuxeo Digital Asset Management
nuxeo-dam-tomcat - Nuxeo Digital Asset Management
nuxeo-dm - Nuxeo Document Management
nuxeo-dm-jboss - Nuxeo Document Management
nuxeo-dm-tomcat - Nuxeo Document Management
$

The problem is that, with that many similarly-named packages, a user who wants to experiment with the Debian packaging might be confused as to which package to install and what issues might arise.

First (and I'm not sure how I managed to do this), I think I managed to install two different DM packages, I removed one and, when I tried to purge the other, the purge failed since the user account "nuxeodm" no longer existed, and the removal script quite clearly didn't know how to handle that and continued to fail. The obvious solution is to make absolutely sure to define the Conflicts properties of the Debian packages completely so that this can't happen. For instance, when using "apt-cache show", nuxeo-dm-tomcat is listed as conflicting with nuxeo-dm-jboss, but the reverse conflict is not listed, so it's entirely possible (I think) to install both packages if you do it in the "wrong" order, at which point bad things might happen. So first order of business is to toughen up the conflicts listings.

Next, the DM package names alone don't help with knowing the versioning, as "apt-cache show" shows that nuxeo-dm-tomcat is 5.4.0.1-01, nuxeo-dm-jboss is 5.3.2-01 and nuxeo-dm is 5.4.0.1-02, and one of them conflicts with both of the other packages, while the other conflicts with only one of them. So in addition to fixing the Conflicts settings, the Description fields of those packages should be expanded to clearly explain who should be installing each package, and perhaps recommending one of the others in some circumstances. (Is there a reason there are two packages, nuxeo-dm and nuxeo-dm-tomcat, that look really similar but still have differences, like in their dependency lists?)

Anyway, you get the idea – the Debian packaging can definitely be cleaned up.

rday