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Re: multiarch/bi-arch status (ETA) question



On Tue, 5 Jul 2005, Hugo Mills wrote:

  It caused considerable controversy when it was first suggested, and
continued to do so for some time. I suspect that the only reason it
isn't causing much controversy at the moment is because very few
people are doing anything on it right now, so it's not being noticed
much.

I guess I can only ask... what... on... earth... was the problem?

It looks like an extremely small, well-calibrated change to me. Hold that thought, I know what you're thinking...

  It's quite a lot more complicated than that. You need explicit
support in dpkg, for a start. And in dselect, apt, and all apt's
friends. I had a go at doing the dpkg support last year, and it
defeated me(*). It is very much non-trivial...

Why? If I read this correctly...

http://www.linuxbase.org/futures/ideas/multiarch/

All the directories that get moved are symlinked from their original locations. All you have to do is make the move, and then the apps; dpkg, apt, etc all catch up _later_. That's all I'm suggesting. At some point the infrastructure work is done and a big enough subset of packages are ready, and you can switch. But in the meantime, why not start? At least make a decision, move the directories...



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