Re: RFC: pentium optimized debian

[Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>]

Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> This is already mostly handled by APT, the only missing component is
> knowledge that 1.0.3 for i386 is 'older' than 1.0.3 for i686. I think that
> the correct thing to do is to have a new architecture for i686 package and
> to not use Joey's idea of an optimization field.

I understand what you're talking about, but I disagree that this is a large
enough drawback to require a seperate arch. If we require a separate arch,
I'm afraid it'll be too much work and it'll never get done.

If you mean, a sperate arch with only a few pentium optmized packages in it,
and apt gets the rest from i386, the problem with this is that we have to
modify dpkg to recognise pentium as a sperate arch, and recognise that you
can still install i386 packages.

I was thinking that once you told apt you preferred pentium packages, you'd
just reinstall by hand whatever packages you really cared about having
optimized. Then, as packages were upgraded, apt would naturally select the
pentium optimized packages first (since you list them first in
/etc/apt/sources.list), so you would eventually end up using all the pentium
optimized packages.

                              
> You could then somehow tell apt that you want to fetch i386 and i686 (with
> preference given to i686) apt would then automatically know to generate 
> binary-i386 AND binary-i686 for all queries.        

I don't really understand how this differs from telling apt you want to
fetch i386 and pentium optimized addon (with perference given to
Optimization: pentium).

> However, dpkg does not install an architecture field into the status file.
> JoeyH: does dpkg install your new field into the status file? Without this
> information APT can't operate correctly.

I've left it out so far, but I could add it. Why exactly does apt need it?
(I think it's a rather nice thing to put in just so you can dpkg -s a
package and see if you've got an optimized version installed.)

-- 
see shy jo


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