Re: Building process needs certain architecture's machine

[Kov Chai <tchaikov@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 11:11 PM, Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de> wrote:
> Kov Chai <tchaikov@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I am packaging sunpinyin. The install script of this software will
>> identify the endian-ness of the building machine and generate a binary
>> data file from its architecture independent format.  And the
>> executable only works with the data file of appropriate endian-ness.
>>
>> So, to minimize the usage of debian mirror space and bandwidth, I
>> think the best way to package it is to create two more data packages,
>> one for big-endian, the other for small-endian. The problem is that
>> the upstream does not provide any way to generate the data file of
>> specified endian-ness. I also examined the source file only to find
>> out there is no straightforward way to do it other than to swap the
>> bits at all the places where the endian-ness kicks in.
>>
>> Is there any way to work it out?
>>
>> Thanks in advance.
>
> The best way would be to patch the source to use architecture
> independent data. Swap the endianness while you read the file.

Thanks for your suggestion, Goswin. Since the source code will
generally read/write the file very frequently, swapping the
endian-ness on the fly would impact its user experience, maybe I can
write a converter which swaps the endian-ness when the package is
installed and write the converted binary out to some file in
/usr/share/sunpinyin.

>
> Other than that, how big is the file? Is it worth having it split out?
>

Actually, there are two binary files. One is 6.5 MB, the other is 23.2
MB. They are basically statistic data. With the tools provided by
another package (still in RFS), user are allowed to create his/her own
data files. So I think splitting the data out and making the binary
package `recommends' the data package would be more flexible from
user's perspective.




-- 
Regards
Kov Chai