Re: [multiarch] Proposal for *-dev packages

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Chris Cheney <ccheney@cheney.cx> writes:

> On Wed, Jan 14, 2004 at 07:26:53PM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > You all have seen the other thread about multiarch? This one is a
> > different part of the puzzle.
> > 
> > The proposal is to make all *-dev packages "Architecture: all". This
> > should be a strong should or must directive and a must for
> > built-essential for sarge+1.
> 
> Among all the other reasons this is a bad idea there is one that makes
> it very annoying.
> 
> libfoo1
> Arch: any
> 
> libfoo1-dev
> Arch: all
> Depends: libfoo1 (${Source-Version})
> 
> A new version of libfoo1 is uploaded the archive, m68k (eg) hasn't built
> it yet but needs to build something that depends on it.

This a very strong reason. I allways thought that -all packages should
be handled seperatly per arch and checked for dependency problems,
very similar to the testing scripts. But thats a major restructuring
of the archive scripts.

One strong point for the "against" side. I think that tips the scale
on this one.

MfG
        Goswin