Re: Specifying ia32-libs in control when on a 64 bit Debian/Ubuntu?

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

Ignacio Valdes <ivaldes@hal-pc.org> writes:

> On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 8:16 AM, Goswin von Brederlow<goswin-v-b@web.de> wrote:
>> Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:
>>
>>> Ignacio Valdes <ivaldes@hal-pc.org> writes:
>>>
>>>> It would seem a simple solution but I've searched and searched and
>>>> have not found one. Is there no resolution for this?
>>>
>>> The solution is to generate multiple packages, one for each
>>> architecture.  This is the normal way in which Debian packages are
>>> built.
>>>
>>> The problem you're running into is that you want to reuse the same
>>> binary package on multiple architectures, which is not a standard way of
>>> creating Debian packages.  The tools therefore have not been enhanced to
>>> add features to support that (since Debian as a project doesn't much
>>> care about that use case).
>>
>> You actually shouldn't build the package for amd64 at all in such a
>> case (any more). Install ia32-apt-get and then you can install the
>> i386 package.
>>
> I realize that but I would like to have a single package that detects
> that it is running on i386 and does not have ia32-libs as a dependency
> or detects that it is on amd64 and does instruct the user that
> ia32-libs is a dependency. I've been told that this is not possible
> with dpkg and I've searched and read manuals, etc so far without
> finding that this is possible.
>
> -- IV

But you can't.

YOur package is either architecture independent and works on all
architectures with the same depends or it is architecture specific and
has one deb per architecture. If you need ia32-libs that means you
have binary code in there and that is architecture specific.

MfG
        Goswin