On Sun, Jan 11, 2004 at 08:00:36AM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote: > Renaming packages would work but causes a lot of work, build-failures > and broken packages. So, we asked, why do we have to rename packages > in the first place? Because a policy of "no two packages with the same name will be installed simulataneously; dependencies on a package can be resolved by looking at nothing but the name and version" is very simple, useful and effective. > Package: libc6 (1) > Architecture: i386 > ABI: strict > Version: 3.2.3 > > Package: libc6 (2) > Architecture: i686 > ABI: strict > Version: 3.2.3 > > Package: libc6 (4) > Architecture: amd64 > ABI: strict > Version: 3.2.3 > > Only one of 1, 2 or 3 can be installed and 3 is the prefered one > (highest version). But 4 can be installed alone or in combination with > any one of 1, 2 or 3. This proposal means you can't look at Packages files alone to work out the meaning of dependencies, in the above you have to also know that "i686" is a subarch, and "amd64" is distinct from "i386", but compatible. > Ideas, complains, objections? Yes; renaming the packages is a _good_ thing; breaking the "one installed package, one name" rule is really bad. What does "dpkg -L libc6" do on an amd64 system, eg? You're also breaking /var/lib/dpkg/info/<pkg>.*, you're breaking the /usr/share/doc/<pkg>/copyright standard, you're breaking every assumption we've ever made that's based on that rule. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/> I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we can. http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004
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