Re: RFC: pentium optimized debian
On Fri, 24 Jul 1998, Joey Hess wrote:
> 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 think that ultimately this will work out better. No matter what choice
you make you -will- need another directory on the ftp site to store them,
might as well call it binary-i686. Remember that alot of other arch's have
target specific binaries that make use of target specific
instructions/optimizations (arm, alpha, sparc do at least)
The dpkg problem I'm not sure. We can likely easially hack it to know that
a list of arch's are valid. In truth on some systems target specific
optimizations will NOT run on lesser processors. Dpkg should not install
arch specific packages in these cases.
Optimization: Pentium handles the limited case of egcs 'weak' P5 optimizer
that is backwards compatible with a i386 (I think P5 specific packages
are silly, all packages should be P5 optimized and a handfull of crucial
ones should be i386 optimized).
> 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.
See below..
> > 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.)
If you put both sources then apt will see a new version of the i386 binary
before it is avail in P5 optimized form, it will install that and wipe off
your P5 version. When the new i686 binary comes along it will appear to be
the same version and will not be installed. That is why APT needs to know
the exact arch/optimization status of all installed packages. Without that
information any implementation is simply a hack.
Jason
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