[rb-general] Bug#872263: linux-image-4.11.0-1-amd64-dbg: file overwrite error upgrading from stretch-backports

[Daniel Shahaf]

Chris Lamb wrote on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 07:54 -0700:
> > Still, it seems like there is a wider problem here: if the exact same
> > code is ever built in two unrelated packages then their debug info
> > packages will conflict even if the regular binary packages don't.
> 
> I've seen this outside of reproducibility where I was shipping the exact
> same binary in the redis-server and redis-sentinel packages (it changes
> behaviour based on argv[0]).
> 
> The -dbgsym packages then conflicted for the same reason.

Stupid question, but why _do_ the packages conflict?  Couldn't the
package manager notice that the file versions that would be installed by
each package are equivalent [= same name, chmod, and bit-by-bit
contents], and keep the file existing so long as _either_ package is
installed?