Bug#254598: Name of the Debian x86-64/AMD64 port

[Raul Miller <moth@debian.org>]

Here's the main issues as I see them:

[1] Existing body of work/historical precedence -- we've already got
a bunch of packages with "amd64" in the name and a dpkg with x86-64
hardcoded in it (specifically, in dpkg-architecture.pl in the hash
%archtable we have the key "x86-64" and the value "x86_64-linux").

[2] Possible future implementations of the x86-64 architecture.
It's almost completely certain that intel will be releasing a non-amd64
implementation.

[3] Compatability with some sorts of automated processes.  ?????  Other
than [1] I don't know of any such processes.  Is anyone aware of such?

[4] amd64 and x86-64 require translation when compared to uname while
x86_64 requires translation when put into a package name.

[5] The "other distributions and organizations" aspect -- there's ample
precedence for amd64 and for x86-64 and for x86_64.

...

I don't see any reason why dpkg can't support both x86-64 and amd64.
This would look slightly ugly when displaying known architectures but
that's not a technical issue.

The real issue is probably the archive issue.  We could have both a
Contents-x86-64.gz and a Content-amd64.gz which list the same files,
but the implications of supporting this over time are troubling.

I suppose it's also worth noting that we have a Contents-hurd-i386.gz,
but I'm at a loss of determining the relevance of that to this situation.

Anyways, I think the situation that needs to be resolved is between
ftpmasters and the amd64 porting team.  So we should focus on issues
which are specifically relevant to each.

-- 
Raul