[Pkg-javascript-devel] Bug#623509: npm and mricron: error when trying to install together

[Michael Hanke]

Hi Chris,

I want to draw your attention to a bug that has been filed against
mricron yesterday:

http://bugs.debian.org/623509

Summary: there is a filename conflict between 'npm' provided by mricron,
and a binary with the same name coming from the 'npm' package.

http://packages.debian.org/sid/npm

Here is what the npm maintainer wrote in response:

On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 11:09:11AM +0200, Jérémy Lal wrote:
> Hi,
> users expect npm to provide npm, and is only invoked on the command line,
> so renaming will certainly deceive users.
> And the other hand, mricron's npm has a .desktop file and can be renamed
> without users losing track of it (being still listed in the Education's menu
> as NPM). A quick glance at mricron shows it does not rely on /usr/bin/npm
> so it wouldn't need a patch.

I tend to agree with him -- most users probably start NPM by selecting
it from the menu and being a GUI-tool it shouldn't be used in 3rd-party
scripts. Hence, I guess the easy way out of this would be to rename
mricron's npm to something like 'mricron-npm'.

Would you support this? Are we missing something in this assessment of
the situation?

Thanks,

Michael

-- 
Michael Hanke
http://mih.voxindeserto.de