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Bug#31946: AMENDMENT] Adding dpkg-architecture to Packaging Manual



[this mail is CC to three interested people. If any of you get this mail by
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let us know.]

Hello,

Santiago raised the issue of the names of the environment variables.
I am open to discussion about this, because the perfect names are probably
not proposed yet.

In particular the GNU_* names are probably not chosen very well.

The current proposal has:

SYSTEM: for the whole string.
ARCH:   for the cpu
KERNEL: for the os/kernel (former OS).

The INSTALL file of a GNU software package says:

TYPE:   for the whole string.
CPU:    for the cpu.
SYSTEM: for the kernel/os.

(It also has VENDOR for the middle string, which is not used in Debian).

Please let me know what you like more. I chose the former set by adopting
commonly used nomenclature among Debian developers, which was probably not a
good idea after all.

The second set is more in sync with the actual use of the variables.
Actually, now that someone draw my attention to it, I like it more to be
consistent with GNU nomenclature, especially because the strings are used
mainly for GNU configure. It has more advantages: the cpu is really labelled
CPU, and it does prevent confusing the Debian ARCHitecture with the GNU
system TYPE.

If nobody has any (strong) opinions about it, I would like to propose to
change my own proposal to use the second set. Geek, now you must notice that
this is the first time I go through this policy proposal procedure :)

Waiting is,
Marcus

-- 
"Rhubarb is no Egyptian god."        Debian GNU/Linux        finger brinkmd@ 
Marcus Brinkmann                   http://www.debian.org    master.debian.org
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de                        for public  PGP Key
http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/       PGP Key ID 36E7CD09


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