As an additional remark, the Policy text suggests that the combination of Breaks and Replaces directives should allow dpkg to overwrite the overlapping files and transfer ownership of said files to the new package.
This section: > It is usually an error for a package to contain files which are on the system > in another package. However, if the overwriting package declares that it > `Replaces` the one containing the file being overwritten, then `dpkg` will > replace the file from the old package with that from the new. The file will > no longer be listed as “owned” by the old package and will be taken over by > the new package. Normally, `Breaks` should be used in conjunction with > `Replaces`. https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html#s-replaces However, as demonstrated above, I could not observe this behavior in practice. Rather, dpkg will disallow both installation and unpacking of the new overlapping package. This is with an up-to-date Debian Testing system. Daniel
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