Fixing Debian depenencies using fake package

Few days ago, I noticed odd problem with koha-common package. It depends on mysql-client which on squeeze tries to install version 5.1 which conflicts with my installation which uses Percona MySQL build. How can we fix this?

As it turns out, it rather easy. I will just create fake package which will provide mysql-client and in turn depend on percona-server-client using something like:

koha-dev:/srv# cat mysql-client-fake/DEBIAN/control 
Package: mysql-client-fake
Version: 0.0.1
Section: database
Priority: optional
Architecture: all
Depends: percona-server-client
Provides: mysql-client
Suggests:
Conflicts:
Maintainer: Dobrica Pavlinusic <dpavlin@rot13.org>
Description: Provides mysql-client for percona build
koha-dev:/srv# dpkg-deb -b mysql-client-fake .
dpkg-deb: building package `mysql-client-fake' in `./mysql-client-fake_0.0.1_all.deb'.
koha-dev:/srv# dpkg -i mysql-client-fake_0.0.1_all.deb 
(Reading database ... 59348 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace mysql-client-fake 0.0.1 (using mysql-client-fake_0.0.1_all.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement mysql-client-fake ...
Setting up mysql-client-fake (0.0.1) ...
Quick and easy. Before you start bashing Debian for this, have in mind that both Koha and Percona MySQL builds are not official Debian packages, so it's not really Debian developers problem.

Update: This problem occurs because Debian developers decided to use virtual-mysql-server and virtual-mysql-client Provides so Percona changed it's provides to virtual-mysql-server but Koha package requires older mysql-client.