Re: ':any' syntax in package names in jessie/sid Packages
On 20 April 2014 12:58, Thorsten Glaser <tg@debian.org> wrote:
> Stuart Prescott <stuart <at> debian.org> writes:
>
>> Unfortunately, the people who understand multiarch well enough to write it
>> up for policy haven't done so which leaves us with no normative
>> documentation in policy for the the Multi-Arch field in Packages, no
>> description of how the package manager should deal with multi-arch packages
>> and their dependencies and no documentation of best practices for -dev
>> packages etc.
>
> This can be read as "M-A in its current form is RC-buggy and must
> not be released". With the obvious follow-ups (revert M-A perl/python
> in sid, as Guillem said).
>
This is a bit of a stretch. By default Debian systems install a single
architecture only, and do not enable foreign architectures. Therefore
by default M-A fields and/or :any / :native suffixes make no
difference in dependency and build-dependency resolutions.
At Debconf 2013 in Switzerland, there was a multi-arch BoF to address
"m-a for interpreters" (python, perl, ruby, etc.) and I solid and
working plan was designed there and then. The python m-a work
pre-dates that BoF, and as soon as more correct strategy is
implemented, I'd expect for python to switch. In a way python m-a work
was a pilot to find out caveats. As it stands right now, python
multiarch work does enable cross-compilation of packages that also
compile python extensions. It doesn't help with i want to install
$foo:all -> figure out all the right transitive dependencies for
either of the arches that i can run. And that's the problem the 2013
BoF has a plan to fix.
--
Regards,
Dimitri.
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