Re: smarter way to differ architectures needed?

[Gordon Matzigkeit <gord@trick.fig.org>]

>>>>> Marcus Brinkmann writes:

 MB> Hi, another Hurd thing is (very slowly) approaching, which will
 MB> become important for auto building.
[...]

I have one vague idea that might be a good solution to this problem:

Why not implement the Architecture field using `Depends' (if it isn't
done this way already)?

Then, we'd have one virtual package (call it `hwarch') which would
describe the hardware architecture of the system.  All other
architectural features would be provided by other packages, such as
libc6, linux, gnumach, hurd, etc.

That way we can use the full power of the dpkg
depends/requires/provides/conflicts/suggests/etc. mechanism to
distinguish between different architectures.

This would probably be just as difficult to implement as a more
specialized solution, but it would put us in a much better position to
be able to cope with unusual architecture demands (such as packages
that can run under emulation on multiple conflicting ``base
architectures'').

I haven't thought too much about this, and I don't have the time to
elaborate much more fully... I just wanted to publicize my idea so
that it doesn't get lost in the shuffle.

Thanks,

-- 
 Gordon Matzigkeit <gord@fig.org> //\ I'm a FIG (http://www.fig.org/)
    Lovers of freedom, unite!     \// I use GNU (http://www.gnu.org/)
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