Re: Debian AMD64 Port Ready

[Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.org>]

Chris Cheney wrote:
> > > Sid. The port is currently at 97% compiled with most of the remaining
> > > packages having FTBFS RC bugs filed for unrelated reasons. We have also
> > > finished debian-installer for the AMD64 port and generate daily builds.
> > > All that still remains to be done is for dpkg to include the amd64
> > > patch, for archive space be given to the port, and for an official
> > > buildd to be setup.
> > 
> > I also thought that the pure AMD64 port is technically ok, but
> > worthless from a usability point of view since it is not compatible
> > with AMD64 ports of other distributions.  If that's the case indeed,
> > and if you are talking about the pure amd64 port, I don't believe
> > Debian should include it in sid.
> 
> I have not heard of any compatibility issues, there is a lib64 dir just
> as there is on the other distributions. It just happens to be a symlink.
> Also, Multiarch is expected to be adopted by FHS/LSB and makes the
> current distributions obsolete wrt their library placement in any case.
> And since when is compatibility with other dists more important that
> having support for an arch at all?  How is not being compatible with

It has always been an issue.  Since AMD64 will probably be adopted
commercially, there will be third party applications, that will only
run on other distributions and not on Debian, which would make the
Debian port pretty useless if you want to run only one other third
party application which was compiled for another distribution.

We've always tried very hard to keep our glibc compatible with the one
from other distributions.

> other distributions useless usability wise? I have never had the reason
> to install another distributions rpm package on my system and have not
> heard of anyone else needing to either, on amd64 or even i386 for that
> matter. Of course Debian will be useless usability wise if sarge does

I acknowledge that this is your personal experience.  It does not mean
that it is everybody's experience.  Especially, it does not have to
imply that no user will ever want to run third party software.

> not ship with AMD64 arch support since by 2007 (sarge+1) all desktop
> systems will be AMD64/EM64T/IA32E based. BTW Intel is expected to enable
> the 64bit extensions on the P4 3.2GHz+ chips by the end of August 2004.

Since the amd64 CPU is fine running i386 code, how could the i386 port
be useless?

Regards,

	Joey

-- 
Given enough thrust pigs will fly, but it's not necessarily a good idea.

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