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Re: Fnal request for atlas package input



On Fri, Mar 02, 2001 at 10:35:06AM -0500, Camm Maguire wrote:
> OK, I think I agree.  What do you think of having one package which
> covers major subarch divisions, or a package providing only the
> generic, and allowing the user to rebuild and tune to their hardware?
> The latter is certainly simpler, but
> 1) It assumes some ability on the users part to handle the versioning
> of the custom packages, so that their package isn't automatically
> 'upgraded' to the generic
> 2) Can't share /usr across different subarchs (does anyone do this
> anyway?) 
> 3) Have to remember to rebuild when upgrading CPU, or moving system
> disk into a different machine.
> 
> Maybe these issues aren't really that important, after all.  There was
> originally some preference expressed on debian-beowulf for this
> functionality, but the balance seems to have shifted.

 What if you had the package install source and build the libraries in the
postinst script, according to a config file that specified what arch/subarch
options to use?  Then you could configure it once, and upgrades would get it
rebuilt when needed.

 People who wanted to share /usr across subarchs could use symlinks to a
per-machine directory that point back to the appropriate shared version.
(like /etc/alternatives)  It might be hard to automate this, but it
shouldn't be too hard to do for the end user.  Don't worry about it when
packaging.

 This would make for a self-modifying package, but at least we are
generating more files, rather than removing some that came with it.

-- 
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ;  e-mail: X(peter@llama.nslug. , ns.ca)

"The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish the hours!
 Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack
 my day so wretchedly into small pieces!" -- Plautus, 200 BCE



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