[Syslog-ng-maintainers] Bug#893882: Please rearrange packaging so that syslog-ng binaries can be installed alongside different system-log-daemon

[Andras Korn]

Package: syslog-ng
Version: 3.13.2-4
Severity: wishlist

Hi,

currently syslog-ng conflicts with system-log-daemon and
linux-kernel-log-daemon. This is appropriate for the common case where
people want to have exactly one log daemon on their system, which is then
started automatically during boot, rotates the logfiles as necessary and so
on. If they install syslog-ng, they reasonably expect that their previous
log daemon would be disabled and/or uninstalled.

I have a less common use-case: I'd like to use syslog-ng only to process and
store log messages incoming over the network, and would like to use other
programs to take care of local logs (syslog as well as kmsg).

So far, I used to fork the syslog-ng package and edited out the Conflicts,
but there would be a better way: rearrange packaging so that there is a
package (e.g. syslog-ng-bin) that only contains the binaries necessary to
run syslog-ng (but no configuration, no initscript, no systemd unit file)
and doesn't Conflict with anything. The syslog-ng package could then Depend
on syslog-ng-bin and contain a configfile, initscript, logrotate job file
and whatnot.

Existing users would be unaffected.

Thanks!

András

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