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Re: architecture alias and disto rebuild



* Bill Allombert [Mon, 12 Sep 2005 17:39:36 +0200]:

> Some distributions/people rebuild a lot of Debian packages from Debian
> source while making no change to the source. While this is technically
> a binNMU they seldom bother to bump the version, which lead to two debs
> files with different content (if they are built with a different version
> of gcc, e.g) which somehow break the package version idea and make very
> hard to see it is not the one compiled by Debian.

> This is understandable since bumping the version can cause unforeseen
> bugs  (though I would like very much a list of package that cannot be
> binNMUed).

  Rebuild arch:all packages then.

> So I propose a alternate solution:

> If the distro foobar rebuild packages on i386, they could use
> i386foobar as architecture name instead of i386, this way every
> package they rebuild will be clearly marked as such. 

> Of course, if foobar want to allow regular Debian package to be installed,
> they can just patch dpkg so that it accept both kind of package.

> The morale of the story is: since we have now comprehensive plateform
> handling with CPU-SYSTEM, why not go a little farther and add a BUILDER
> field with the suitable logic in dpkg so that it allow to install
> packages from any builder by default ?

  This would be a gross hack, and I don't see why people who don't
  bother to use a simple, clean and tested mechanism to mark rebuilds
  (namely, dch -i) would go and use this other yet-to-be-implemented
  one.

  IMHO, it's like if you say: "sometimes we move files around packages
  but forget to add the proper replaces field; as this annoys our users,
  let's make dpkg silently overwrite moved files".

  Cheers,

-- 
Adeodato Simó
    EM: asp16 [ykwim] alu.ua.es | PK: DA6AE621
 
The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.
                -- Amos Bronson Alcott



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