Re: Explain to me "any all"
* Paul Elliott <pelliott@blackpatchpanel.com> [120226 02:03]:
> The new standard allows "any all" in the Architecture field.
>
> Please explain this new feature. What does it do and under what circumstances
> should it be used?
It's for the Architecture field of the .dsc. As that field is
automatically generated, you don't "use" it normally.
As maintainer you usually edit the debian/control field. There every
binary package has an Architecture list. This Architecture in the .dsc
is the merged list of all those architectures.
If one package is e.g. architecture "i386" and one is architecture
"any", then those are merged to "any" (as there is a package to be
generated on any architecture, it does not matter that on i386 there
are even more packages to generate).
What is changed is what happens if one .deb is architecture "any"
and one .deb is architecture "all". Former versions of dpkg merged
that to "any" and policy reflected that.
The problem with this is that it loses information whether there
are architecture "all" packages to be built. As architecture "all"
packages were never built by the buildds, this was no actual
problem, so only fixed recently.
Current versions of dpkg merge this to "any all", and policy was
changed to reflect this.
Bernhard R. Link
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