Goswin von Brederlow writes ("Re: Multi-arch all-architecture plugins"): > As you said these are usualy plugins that nothing depends on. So this > wouldn't help much. Also if there is a dependency than the rules for > m-a:same should be sufficient. If the package is something to depend on > then packages of all architectures should depend on it if they use > it. The plugin might only be used by amd64 packages and none of the i386 > would depend on it and then installing only amd64 is perfectly fine.
I don't think that's the case. Consider something like fakeroot. The fakeroot binary itself may be any architecture, because its function is to set up a socket and be a server for children and set an LD_PRELOAD and so forth. But the libfakeroot.so must be available for all configured architectures so that the LD_PRELOAD works no matter what architecture(s') binaries end up running. So you would have: Package: fakeroot Multi-Arch: foreign Depends: libfakeroot Package: libfakeroot Multi-Arch: all and it would have to mean "install libfakeroot for all configured architectures". If libfakeroot were m-a:same then it would mean "install libfakeroot for the arch whose fakeroot we picked" which is wrong. > I would concentrate on the case that nothing depends on it and the > solution while keeping the depending case in the back of my mind. ... > Another possible solution was to have a metapackage with wildcard > dependency: > > Package: plugin-all > Depends: plugin:* So plugin would be m-a:allowed ? > One thing to keep in mind is that the list of architectures for the > system might change (the admin adds another architecture) making any > such all-archs dependencies suddenly unfullfilled. But that is probably > unavoidable and apt-get -f install would fix it right up. Yes. Something would have to be done then, certainly. Perhaps the right answer is not to consider configured architectures, but rather architectures for which any package is installed. Ie, as follows: * Find the set of all architectures "foo" for which any package is present on the system * Now for each Package: plugin Architecture: bar Multi-Arch: all imagine a dependency Depends: plugin:foo1, plugin:foo2, ... Should dpkg do this as well as apt ? Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20281.13734.668798.615...@chiark.greenend.org.uk