Bug#595139: apt: multiarch installation chokes on binNMUs

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:

> On Thu, Sep 02, 2010 at 02:42:35PM +0200, David Kalnischkies wrote:
>> Hello (again) Simon Richter,
>
>> 2010/9/1 Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org>:
>> > when trying to install a multiarch package that has been binNMUed on one
>> > architecture, apt complains about being unable to resolve the implicit
>> > conflicts, as the version number is not the same across all
>> > architectures.
>
>> This is really a problemâ?¦
>> but not only here but in general as at least changelog.Debian.gz will differ
>> (a bit) and can therefore not be shared between the installed packages.
>> So, i guess it is a bug in the MultiarchSpec [0]. (cc'ing Steve Langasek)
>
>> source:Version is a problem as the source version is not always the same
>> version as the one the binary rebuild is based on - e.g. comerr-dev
>> (bad example, but the first i found) which would have in a binary rebuild
>> e.g. version 2.1-1.41.12-2+b1 while source is e2fsprogs (1.41.12-2)â?¦
>
> Sorry, it's not a bug in the spec, but an acknowledged limitation.
> Multi-Arch: same packages *must* be kept in version lockstep across
> architectures, which means that binNMUs will be of reduced value for such
> packages.
>
> Neither multiarch support nor binNMU support is a hard requirement for
> packages in the archive.  We will probably have to set some rules in policy
> about what the expected behavior is going forward, and we may want to tune
> the binNMU implementation in wanna-build to be more friendly to multiarch
> (or at least to fail gracefully); but ultimately there will be some use
> cases that just don't work anymore via binNMU, and it may be more
> straightforward to use sourceful NMUs for these packages.

Given that multiarch packages should also be usable for cross-compile
that means that any binNMU will have to rebuild ALL architectures of a
package. No more binNMUs for just one or two archs or the packges will
be uninstallable with the version skews.

MfG
        Goswin