Re: Breaking /emul/ia32-linux for squeeze

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:

> On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 11:03:06AM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
>
>> > What transitional issues is that going to cause us if and when multiarch
>> > becomes generally available, if biarch packages start using the path now?
>
>> libfoo i386 then needs Replaces: lib32foo. But it already needs
>> Conflicts: lib32foo I think so there isn't really any harm done.
>
> No, currently there isn't anything else that would require adding such a
> conflict.

When dpkg supports multiarch then you could have libfoo (i386) and
lib32foo installed at the same time. That would mean that you have
(possibly) 2 different versions of  the same library installed. ld.so
would then prefer one over the other resulting in either packages
depending on lib32foo or package depending on libfoo (i386) to use the
wrong library. A package with "Depends: libfoo (>= 1.2-3)" could
suddenly get libfoo 1.1-1 (from lib32foo) and crash.

So to make sure there is only one package providing a specific library
for an arch the lib32foo and libfoo (i386) packages have to conflict.

MfG
        Goswin