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Re: proposal: native/bytecode executables proposal



On Sat, Oct 19, 2002 at 10:25:30AM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
>    o the native version of this package will be called foo, and built on
>    arches supporting the native code compiler. Ocaml will provide a file
>    listing all native code supporting arches, so you can easily use it
>    for your packages. I am afraid you will have to copy this file over
>    each time, since it can not be done automatically, i think, but then
>    maybe with a clever substitution rule, it can be obtained.

We can write some substitution tools for debhelpers that will expand a
variable like ${ocaml-native-archs} to the list of the current archs
supported by the ocaml native code compiler.

>    o the bytecode version of this package will be called foo-byte or
>    foo-vm, or some other prefix we feel is more appropriated. It will be
>    built arch: all and provide foo. When apt-get install foo is run, it
>    will choose the real foo over the virtual foo on arches supporting
>    the native code, and will choose the virtual foo on arches where only
>    the bytecode version is present. I will test this this WE, and inform
>    you, but this is what i was told when i asked the apt maintainers
>    about it.

If this work as you said, it will be perfect. Anyway IMO is a good idea
to ask the apt maintainers if this behaviour is granted or if it is a
side effect. In any case we should better ask for some kind of
certainity that this behaviour will not change in the future, this is
a crucial issue for the ocaml packages.

> The only bad side of this is that we will create additional dependencies

I see another bad side: the damned version dependencies problem for
virtual packages.
On archs which don't support native code compiler, foo-bytecode will
provide foo, right? So on these archs how does the packaging system
react if another package depends on foo >= x.y.z?

Cheers.

-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli - undergraduate student of CS @ Univ. Bologna, Italy
zack@cs.unibo.it | ICQ# 33538863 | http://www.cs.unibo.it/~zacchiro
"I know you believe you understood what you think I said, but I am not
sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant!" -- G.Romney

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