Suggestion: Promote Debian Architecture Neutral Release Format
Debian Devel Gurus:
I have been lurking for a couple of months watching the various
discussions on Debian lists. The recent thread about slink release
dates for various architectures has me concerned. I think the Debian
should strive to be as "architecture neutral" as humanly possible and
keep the Debian architecture releases unified. I fear that breaking
the distribution according to architecture would likely lead to
"forking" and greater fragmentation of the Debian development community.
I suggest a single Debian release for all CPU platforms using to the
maximum extent practical:
- Source Only compiled locally
- intermediate compiler code (mostly but not fully compiled and still
architecture neutral)
- P-Code (similar to UCSD Pascal P-Code locally compiled)
- Compile to Java Bytecodes
- ANDF (Architecture Neutral Distribution Format or modern equivalent)
Obviously, this is NOT APPLICABLE for all applications. However, I
think most of the Debian release could be done once for all
architectures. The Debian Source CD already exists but IIRC
dpkg/dselect/apt does not support "build from source" as an option
(yet?).
Is "write once, run everywhere" an impossible dream? I think it would
help.
Does Debian Policy promote architecture neutral formats for
distribution?
Andrew Lynch
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