Re: amd64 and sarge
Raul Miller (moth@debian.org) wrote:
> > biarch is useful for systems in transition. That means people upgrading
> > from 32 bit systems, and people working with packages which haven't been
> > ported -- for whatever reason.
On Thu, Jul 29, 2004 at 12:34:33PM -0400, Stephen Frost wrote:
> The vast majority of packages in Debian have *already* been ported.
Obviously.
And, just as obviously, that's only a part of the picture.
> That's what pure64 *is*. The number of people 'upgrading' from 32bit
> systems is probably around 1 (that being you), the rest of us have moved
> on to pure64 already, and did so a long ass time ago.
If this logic were correct, no one would need to install amd64 in
the future.
Maybe you can't imagine that people would replace a motherboard and keep
the same hard drive, but that doesn't mean nobody works that way.
> > There's little to no gain in making every package biarch. So there's
> > no point in calling a plan to not do so "half-ass".
>
> This is just blatently false. There certainly is gain in making every
> package supported on both architectures. It gives our users *options*.
> For the amd64 side, it allows programs (*all* of them) to use more than
> 2G of memory if they have a need to, it makes *most* of them run faster
> and more effeciently. We need the i386 stuff anyway since there are
> i386-only systems out there today. Perhaps some day we will be able to
> remove i386, but I don't expect that to happen anytime soon.
You're talking about optimization. If you're really concerned about
optimization, you'd be talking about building and installing packages
from source. That offers far more in the way of choices and tailoring.
My biarch proposal doesn't address how to make sure amd64 packages don't
replace an i386 packages across upgrades of those packages, but that's
because I don't care about that issue -- not because it can't be done.
> > And, frankly, the current pure64 port already includes most of what
> > biarch needs.
>
> The current pure64 port has gone far beyond the half-ass biarch you're
> referring to. Unfortunately, you can't manage to see that.
False.
First, in a very literal sense, the pure64 port is incorporated in the
biarch I'm referring to.
Second, the changes I've proposed have obviously not been incorporated
into pure64.
More fundamentally, "half-assed" is purely pejorative, and most of what
you're saying is more about belittling than conveying useful information.
--
Raul
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