Bug#268709: Architecture names should have a "${kernel}-" prefix

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

Hi,

On Sat, Aug 28, 2004 at 07:33:54PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
> Currently none of the Linux-based dpkg architecture names are using the
> corresponding "linux-" prefix.  This is unconsistent with non-Linux dpkg
> architectures like "hurd-i386" or "kfreebsd-i386".  In fact, it is the
> source of an endless number of bugs since maintainers tend to assume
> "i386" means i386, but ignore that "i386" actualy means Linux with i386.

The other big problem is how to tell that a package is kernel bound or
cpu bound. I would like to have aliases for those in the form of:

	any-<cpu>	(any-i386)	for cpu bound and for any kernel
	<kernel>-any	(linux-any)	for kernel bound and for any cpu

That could be integrated now in a way that the aliases are just expanded
to the current real arches, so we preserve compatiblity.

Additionally we could start recognizing linux-<cpu> as an alias for
<cpu> for now.

> Unfortunately, fixing the problem for existing arches is unviable in
> the short term.  We can, however, prevent new arches from duplicating
> it. Therefore, I intend to inform the maintainers of new ports and
> the maintainers of dpkg to ensure they're aware of the problem.

Well in general there are too many assumptions that we are running
under a Linux kernel, but that's due to Debian being "mainly" a
GNU/Linux distro.

regards,
guillem