Re: Q: binary-all group
cej@CEJCHAN.gli.cas.cz writes:
> I'm just curious what does the main/binary-all group mean: does
> it contain architecture-independent binaries?
Yes.
> If so, what precisely makes them architecture-independent?
File formats. Binary-all packages contain files in
architecture-independent formats like Perl, PostScript, HTML,
manual pages, plain ASCII text, GNU message catalogs or PNG.
Executable files are usually architecture-dependent because
they contain machine instructions which only one architecture
can easily execute, but scripts are architecture-independent.
When a binary-all package is built from a source package,
the files are often copied without any compiling. But there
are exceptions: Texinfo is compiled to Info, PO is compiled
to GMO and so on. These formats have been defined such that
all kind of machines can use them.
The GNU Coding Standards recommend making all data files
architecture-independent.
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