Re: Conditional Recommends

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

David Kalnischkies <kalnischkies@gmail.com> writes:

> environment. I can already hear someone asking for
> Package: libc6
> Recommends: libc6-686 {arch::supports:cmov}
> which soon evolves to a complete language in which you really need
> all the funky stuff like & and | and ! together with hard/soft constraints?

That case would easily covered by multiarch and partial architectures.
There would be a i686 arch with just the optimized packages and apt/dpkg
would allow that arch if the cpu supports it. The configuration doesn't
even have to be in apt/dpkg but there could be a arch-detect package
that contains the detection logic and outputs suitable config for
apt/dpkg.

This would also solve the problem of having to use wrapper scripts,
diversions or runtime detection in binaries to provide an optimized
version.

MfG
        Goswin