Re: arm eabi port, patches

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

On Tue, 2007-02-27 at 08:52:34 +0000, Neil Williams wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 01:46:26 +0200
> Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org> wrote:
> > I think the correct thing to do is to merge dpkg-cross into dpkg
> > itself, and I'm willing to start discussing what's needed from dpkg
> > side to start incrementaly merging the functionality. Nikita, Neil?
> 
> When you say merge functionality, do you still intend that dpkg-cross
> is a distinct binary package built from dpkg sources?

Depends on what dpkg-cross is doing, that's why I was asking for info
on what you'd need from dpkg, I think that's easier, otherwise I'll
have to dig into dpkg-cross sources. But I can see it merged
completely in the futurei, yes. This does not need to be overnight,
and we can migrate functionality incrementaly.

> I don't think it's a good idea to merge dpkg-cross into dpkg to
> generate a 'dpkg --cross' command. The vast majority of dpkg users do
> not need cross support of any kind, even those using cross-built
> binaries (which are installed with dpkg -i as normal). The debconf
> templates for dpkg-cross could just annoy and confuse ordinary dpkg
> users. I think there should still be a /usr/bin/dpkg-cross and a
> binary package called dpkg-cross which provides it.

I don't think dpkg should ask for anything at install time, neither
dpkg-cross FWIW. dpkg in general, has some notions of cross compilation
support, but it's also generally lacking.

Also I consider the current way dpkg-cross is handling cross built
packages a hack, it's fine as it's something that exists and works,
but this can be more or less solved in the future with the multiarch
proposal, which hopefully we'll able to implement for lenny.

> Is it only the architecture list that is of concern? What other
> components of dpkg-cross are actually part of dpkg? (bearing in mind
> that dpkg-cross itself calls dpkg at some points.)

I wanted you guys to walk me there, as I don't know the specifics of
dpkg-cross. It's perfectly fine for this kind of stuff to be "forked"
as a proof of concept, but I'd really like to merge it properly in
dpkg (I thought that would make you happy, guys ;).

regards,
guillem