On Fri, 11 Mar 2011 01:24:52 +0000 Wookey <wookey@wookware.org> wrote: > +++ Jim Heck [2011-03-10 13:12 -0500]: > > With xapt not having made it's way into the official Squeeze release, where > > will I be able to obtain xapt going forward on a long term basis? I'm planning on a backport to Squeeze in due course. I was going to do that once the latest round of translations were in place but then I had to change a lot of strings for improved embuilddeps support. This backport will replace the version of xapt in Emdebian unstable. (Although I might forget, so a bug report against buildd.emdebian.org would be useful.) > > Right now I'm getting > > it from Emdebian's unstable repository. It is also available in Wheezy's > > unstable repository. (Wheezy is testing.) xapt is in Debian unstable (sid), Debian testing (wheezy) and Emdebian sid (unstable). Of these, Emdebian unstable is the oldest - you should use the more recent versions in Debian sid (testing) or Debian wheezy (testing). xapt was only put into the Emdebian unstable repository to make it available on Squeeze. If you are running anything newer than Squeeze you should use xapt from Debian. > It should remain available in emdebian repository as long as it's still > useful. The same probably applies to Wheezy. > > > The following statement by Neil made me think that it might not make it through > > to Wheezy's release, and so might never be part of any official release.. > > > > >Naturally, xapt will disappear with dpkg-cross > > We expect the need for xapt and dpkg-cross to simple disappear as > multiarch gets fully implemented. apt and dpkg will do most of what's > needed. There will probably still be a need for a convenient 'satisfy > cross-deps' command, but that will just call apt to do the work. embuilddeps can take that role - it is proving more convenient than dpgk-checkbuildeps and other dependency calculations and it can be easily modified to call apt with the appropriate Multi-Arch settings instead of calling xapt/dpkg-cross. There will be no need for xapt or dpkg-cross once Multi-Arch is properly implemented. xapt would just be a one-line alias for apt-get anyway. Therefore, the answer is that the long term availability of the *functionality* of xapt is assured into and beyond the foreseeable Debian stable releases. The mechanism will change, that's all. I think we'll have sufficient support in Wheezy that *some* or even 'many' cross-building projects will no longer need xapt but there will likely be packages which have not been converted to Multi-Arch and which therefore still need dpkg-cross. This situation will get more and more painful and complex so it will be in your own interest to pester maintainers to convert packages to Multi-Arch once the process begins. i.e. everyone using xapt should seek it's eventual replacement / removal, not it's persistence. The longer we need xapt the worse things will be. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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