On 2017-05-10 13:56 +0200, Christian Seiler wrote: > On 05/10/2017 11:52 AM, Wookey wrote: > > Debian requires packages to run on the base level ISA defined for each > > architecture (which does change slowly over time). > > Well, kind of. What Debian requires is that if it is at all feasible > software should run on the base ISA - which in practice means that > very often the software is only compiled for the base ISA itself, > resulting in the binaries being slower than they need to be on more > modern hardware. > > However, there are a couple of packages that can't easily be ported > to the base ISA (such as packages that use tons of SSE assembly), and > in this case the consensus was that it's better to have the packages > in Debian at all, even if they aren't available for all users.
Yes. You put that much better than I did. By 'must run on the base ISA', what I mean is that if it can't, but is still useful for many, then it should give a sensible error (as you point out), rather than just exploding. So upstream/packagers have to do _something_ to check for the optional features used and run corresponding code accordingly, even if the fallback code is just "This program cannot run here". Wookey -- Principal hats: Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM http://wookware.org/
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