Bug#664257: multiarch tuples are not documented/defined

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

Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:

> Matthias Klose wrote:
>
>> While we strive to get multiarch ready for squeeze, there is
>> currently nothing to point to what the multiarch tuples actually
>> mean, neither on the Debian side nor on some kind of standards side
>> like the FHS or LSB.  This has to be documented on the Debian side,
>> and better be incorporated into standards like the FHS or LSB.
>>
>> The current state is http://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/Tuples,
>> deriving from http://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/TuplesAbandoned. An
>> email to debian-ports didn't get any feedback. From my point of view
>> such a wiki page should be self-contained and be usable as a
>> reference for upstream projects.
>
> Thanks.  To start (warning: the following is just a bunch of guesses,
> many of which are almost certainly wrong):

Did you read the wiki page?

If I had to define the multiarch tuple I would say:

The multiarch tuple uniquly defines the calling convention used in a
binary or library. For convenience the first GNU triplet implementing a
calling convention is used where possible or suitably extended to remain
unique.

If there are multiple libraries with different ABIs but with the same
calling convention (e.g. i386, i486, i586, ...) so that they can be
interchanged without binaries needing to be recompiled then they share a
multiarch tuple (i386-linux-gnu).

On the other hand if one ABI has multiple calling conventions (hard/soft
floats on arm) then the multiarch tuples must differ for each calling
convention.

MfG
        Goswin