Re: amd64 and dpkg and so
On Thursday 28 August 2003 10:43, Roland Fehrenbacher wrote:
> >>>>> "Xavier" == Xavier Roche <rocheml@httrack.com> writes:
>
> Xavier> On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 11:29:33PM -0500, Michael Shuey wrote:
> >> I don't see a pure 64-bit port as that useful; there's a lot of
> >> software that I just don't need rebuilt (apache, for example).
>
> Xavier> And the major advantage for opteron is to have 32-bit
> Xavier> compatibility. Being able to smoothly migrate from a debian
> x86 to Xavier> a debian opteron, by just changing the hardware, is imho a
> major Xavier> feature.
>
> Fully agreed. A pure 64bit distro would be nothing more than an academical
> exercise at this stage and the foreseeable future with little practical
> value and even less real users. 32 bit binaries will need to run on these
> machines for a long time. Please don't waist resources for this.
Right. One more reason not to do a 64bit-only release is that it would be
incompatible with all the other amd64 distros because we would then probably
put all the libraries in /lib in /lib64.
Note that doing a full combined 32/64bit release in time for sarge is not
a good idea either. dpkg and friends need serious changes for this, but
those changes are only the tip of the iceberg. All library packages need
to be changed and those changes have an impact on the other architectures.
> >> These extra -amd64 packages could be kept in a separate apt archive
> >> initially, until proper testing can be done and a place found in the
> >> main
>
> Xavier> In fact, opteron boxes would use the standard x86 archive, PLUS
> Xavier> additional 64-bit sources. Does this make sense?
Yes. IMHO, we should work on a clean upgrade path from i386 sarge/stable to
i386+amd64 sarge/stable. Once that works well enough, all the changes can
be merged into unstable and be released officially with the version after
sarge.
At the minimum however, I think we should ship i386 sarge with 64 bit
kernels and tool chain, like it is done for sparc and s390. That will let
opteron owners at least use 4GB+ ram without the i386 hacks, which is
probably the main reason to get a 64 bit machine.
Arnd <><
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