Re: -= PROPOSAL =- Release sarge with amd64
* Raul Miller
| On Sat, Jul 17, 2004 at 10:23:13AM -0400, I wrote:
| > Maybe you could explain how you want the debs to look like -- in
| > particular, do you expect that sid is going to have to replace /usr/bin
| > with /usr/i486-linux/bin and /usr/amd64-linux/bin/?
|
| Ok, after reading a few more multiarch docs, I see that that part of
| the proposal has another option, you'd instead have all programs that
| support multiarch have names of the form /usr/bin/amd64-linux-$basename
|
| That makes a bit more sense, but it still is going to require buyin from
| the maintainers of those packages.
Yes, programs which want to be multiarch does have to support it
themselves. Some examples of such packages may be python, perl, gcc.
| Also, which are those packages? At minimum, binutils, gcc and glibc need
| to support multiarch, and be built this way -- and that's mostly because
| gcc's cross compiling support is in such poor shape when contrasted
| with native compiling. [And it's probably worth noting that multiarch
| doesn't seem to address cross compiling at all.]
Why should multiarch address cross compiling? It doesn't address world
peace, excessive amounts of GRs in Debian, pigs not flying or hell still
too hot either, without me seeing that as a flaw in the design.
gcc doesn't have to support multiarch -- if it doesn't, well, then you
compile for your native architecture and be done with that. (More or
less; a few default library search paths have to be changed, but that's
fairly minor). Why does binutils need to support multiarch? glibc
needs to in order for the linker to look in the right directories, but
that patch is already written. (And is trivial anyhow.)
Note that being able to install packages for arch A and B does not mean
you are able to build packages for arch A and B.
| Anyways, the big issue which I don't see being addressed (and the
| reason I'm still Cc-ing debian-devel) is: most packages in debian
| (everything which offers a shared lib) is going to have to be rebuilt
| to support multiarch. Just about every single developer is going to
| have to support the idea, and rebuild their packages to this new standard.
If they want to support multiarch, they have to be rebuilt, yes. From a
quick check, it seems to affect about 2500 binary packages, about 1600
source packages. About 904 different maintainer emails seems to be
affected -- I'll estimate that about 25% of those are duplicates, lists
and other kinds of team-managed sources.
So, yes, it's quite a big effort; luckily, it doesn't have to happen all
at once.
--
Tollef Fog Heen ,''`.
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are : :' :
`. `'
`-
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