ia32 library repository, conclusion
Hi list.
This message is sort of a final report that was planned.
One month's passed since I tried to contact the FTP masters. Discussions
are in the pkg-ia32-libs-maintainers alioth list. At the same time, the
ia32-libs split was presented by its maintainers.
The goal of the ia32 repository is to build and run applications for the
i386 architecture on different ones. That goal's been achieved for
amd64. Support for other architectures's been put off indefinitely
because of lack of resources and demand.
It should be remarked that security updates've been integrated during
last month.
As some may have noticed, a custom version of glibc's available. That
isn't a security update. It's a version that fixes #469035 to make
packages work out of the box. It's been released earlier than planned
because a potential upgrade problem was notified. A new official upload
was made later. I'll hopefully have enough time to switch back to the
official version, though that means rebuilding the repository (sorry, no
other choices left). It'll be fixed.
The system's already working, daily updated and bugs (none pending) are
being fixed. So, why isn't this system integrated in Debian yet?
The reasons aren't technical. If you're an amd64 user that wants to run
or build ia32 software, you can use this repository without problems.
Debian has a different approach in mind that will hopefully be ready for
lenny + 1. Both approaches have different requirements of server,
maintainer and user resources, but they both should cover the
repository's purpose.
As a side effect, some reasons this scheme isn't accepted are shared
with the ia32-libs split (more packages in the archive, extra conversion
step...). Let's hope that doesn't affect the split.
Regarding availability, the mirroring offer's been taken back without
any given reason. That's a problem indeed since the IP's gonna change
eventually. However, if you're still interested in this service, just
drop me a line and I'll solve that problem.
Requests, bug reports, comments are welcome (at my address) as usual.
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