There are now some packages for m68k that make sense only on a specific machine type. Currently we have such packages only for Atari, but others can follow easily. The packages are nvram and setsccserial, and atari-fdisk is about to be debianized.
Those packages are currently Architecture: m68k, but this alone isn't sufficient, because it still allows their installation on e.g. an Amiga, where they don't make sense at all. Currently the preinst script of such packages makes some tests that the machine really is an Atari (via /proc files), but this isn't the cleanest solution. It would be much better if already dependencies could forbid installation on non-Atari machines (or whatever...). James Troup had a fine idea for this: We could introduce new required and essential packages in the base section, like base-atari, base-amiga, base-mac, and so on. (Those packages won't have any files in them for now, but maybe we have something to include in them in future.) Machine-specific packages then can depend on those base-<mach> packages. The appropriate base-<mach> package will be included in the base.tgz of the install disk set for the machine, so it will be installed automatically for new installations. For existing installations, the user has to choose the right one... (We could move the /proc based tests to their preinst, to do it only once.) Of course, the packages should be Architecture: m68k, they're useless for other architectures (that don't need distinction between Atari, Amiga, Mac, ...) All the base-<mach> packages should conflict with each other, so that only one can be installed. The best way to ensure this would be to create a new virtual package 'base-machine', that all base-<mach> packages provide and conflict with. Since policy says that introduction of essential packages and new virtual packages requires discussion on debian-devel, I now ask here if there are any objections to the above. Roman -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
