How to make RPM not to overwrite files when installing new packages? - centos

Question

Engineer Engelbert, a fierce OpenSuSE 11-sp4 user, is in possession of two RPM packages with the same contents:
rpm -qlp ~/onemy_ls_0.0.1_x86_64.rpm | tee a
/.osc/_apiurl
/.osc/_files
/.osc/_meta
/.osc/_osclib_version
/.osc/_package
/.osc/_project
/my_ls/my_ls.sh
rpm -qlp ~/my_ls_0.0.1_x86_64.rpm | tee b
/.osc/_apiurl
/.osc/_files
/.osc/_meta
/.osc/_osclib_version
/.osc/_package
/.osc/_project
/my_ls/my_ls.sh
diff a b | wc
0 0 0
Engineer Engelbert has realized that he can install both packages with no warning from RPM:
rpm -e my_ls-0.0.1-1 ; rpm -i ~/my_ls_0.0.1_x86_64.rpm
rpm -e onemy_ls-0.0.1-1 ; rpm -i ~/onemy_ls_0.0.1_x86_64.rpm
Engineer Engelbert is self-assured about his choices. He knows that's probably a good design choice from rpm developers. So, he checked the man page, certain that there would be an option for not allowing rpm packages to overwrite files in the system. But all the install options he found were:
install-options
[--aid] [--allfiles] [--badreloc] [--excludepath OLDPATH]
[--excludedocs] [--force] [-h,--hash]
[--ignoresize] [--ignorearch] [--ignoreos]
[--includedocs] [--justdb] [--nodeps]
[--nodigest] [--nosignature] [--nosuggest]
[--noorder] [--noscripts] [--notriggers]
[--oldpackage] [--percent] [--prefix NEWPATH]
[--relocate OLDPATH=NEWPATH]
[--repackage] [--replacefiles] [--replacepkgs]
[--test]
He hesitated and found strange that there is --replacefiles, but not --keepfiles. That suggested him that keep would be the default behavior. So, he created an script:
rpm -e onemy_ls-0.0.1-1
rpm -e my_ls-0.0.1-1
rm -rf /my_ls/
rpm -i ~/my_ls_0.0.1_x86_64.rpm
ls -lh /my_ls -d
sleep 120
rpm -i ~/onemy_ls_0.0.1_x86_64.rpm
ls -lh /my_ls -d
That showed that the files were actually overwritten:
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K Aug 16 17:07 /my_ls
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K Aug 16 17:09 /my_ls
After a research, Engineer Engelbert couldn't still find the answer.Now he is in the middle of a flamewar about packaging systems, and, as asked by somebody, he needs your help:
How to make rpm not to overwrite files when installing new packages?
Note - Engineer Engelbert knows that he should create better rpm packages with conflicts management, you don't need to explain him that. He is mostly worried about being sure that his packages won't conflict with other proprietary unpublished packages racing for the same paths in the system.
Note - using fpm, you can regenerate Engineer Engelbert's RPMs:
mkdir -p first_pkg/my_ls/
echo ls > first_pkg/my_ls/my_ls.sh
fpm -s dir -t rpm -n onemy_ls -v 0.0.1 -C first_pkg/ -p onemy_ls_VERSION_ARCH.rpm
fpm -s dir -t rpm -n my_ls -v 0.0.1 -C first_pkg/ -p my_ls_VERSION_ARCH.rpm

Answer 1

Yes: rpm will overwrite all files contained in a *.rpm that are not marked with %config and there is no option to disable that behavior.