Re: Architecture specification strings
At 20:20 +0200 1999-07-26, Matthias Klose wrote:
I cannot follow the rationale for the compatibility argument. Most
Debian packages are built without an explicit architecture
string. For most of these packages this doesn't matter, because the
gnu build architecture is only used in error and help messages
(i.e. gdb). Does such a package violate policy?
I think it's a good idea to make it explicit, some programs make
assumptions based on it (e.g. glibc uses it to decide which set of
optimized routines it should use).
Giving <arch>-<os> as the gnu build architecture makes these packages
incompatible with other distributions. I don't say, policy contradicts
itself, but this argument only makes sense, if the this architecture
string is selected for all linux distributions. Do I may miss here
some other arguments?
The whole "incompatibility" argument is bogus, manually specifying a
host, build, or target alias doesn't change what the real versions of
those are. In some cases it is preserved to be used in directory or
filenames (e.g. in gcc or binutils). In most cases it is used as
input to config.sub in place of config.guess's output, but otherwise
ignored.
Other linux distributions do make use of the vendor place of their own
(redhat, suse) or use `pc' for this field. Given that the Debian way
(<arch>-<os>) already is incompatible, why not use <arch>-debian-<os>,
so you see the branding of the binaries?
It's incorrect usage of the vendor field for one thing, the vendor
field is for hardware vendor, not software.
--
Joel Klecker (aka Espy) Debian GNU/Linux Developer
<URL:mailto:jk@espy.org> <URL:mailto:espy@debian.org>
<URL:http://web.espy.org/> <URL:http://www.debian.org/>
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