On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 10:17:14PM -0800, D. Starner wrote: > To become LSB compliant would involve changing half the packages in > Debian to achieve a result to many AMD64 developers consider inelegant; > furthermore, a multiarch design is being created that would allow > us to install Linux binaries on NetBSD or Hurd, or ix86 binaries on > PowerPC, provided an appropriate emulator, as well as 32-bit on a > 64-bit system. This will require changing half the packages, but for > a better design. It's not a hack, it's a feature.
The most likely reason someone would pick the AMD64 architecture over the PowerPC architecture is that AMD64 can natively run I386 binaries. What you seem to be saying here (and I must admit that I've not tried to install the current debian amd64 system) is that you want Debian to go with some vaporware emulation capability, instead of providing that native support. If we're going for vaporware, why not just go for the vaporware filesystem shim which makes /lib and /lib32 appear as /lib64 and /lib for 32 bit binaries? That way, you could claim LSB compliance, too -- at least for 32 bit binaries. Vaporware can do anything. Or how about building the chroot cage that seems to do the equivalent, and debian install time. Maybe make it a package (amd64compat32). Oops, now you need something to automatically chroot 32 bit binaries. Well, you can use vaporware for that, too (at least this would be simpler vaporware). Anyways, vaporware or not, please realise that "my 32 bit binaries won't work" will be a significant issue for at least some of the people who would want to install a Debian amd64 system. And treatment of that issue would basically be the same as the outcome in the current situation: people install some other distribution, instead -- maybe with Debian in some chroot cage so they can play around with Debian. But making a chroot cage transparent to something like KDE or Gnome isn't completely trivial (the phrase "inelegant" comes to mind, for some of the obvious approaches). Of course, Debian in chroot is currently doable (it'll be i386 Debian, which isn't glamorous, but should at least be fairly stable). And, of course, when someone running a Debian hosted in some other OS system hits a low level bug, they're going to not be sure which OS it's a bug in, so might be reluctant to file a report on this issue. Which might mean they eventually give up on the chroot -- but at that point it really doesn't matter whether they have 64 bit debian in the chroot or 32 bit debian. > The current mirroring system can hardly be considered a hack. There's > mumblings about space restrictions, but that's really in the people > who set up the mirror system's bailwick. Is this a claim that you're willing to wait for them to solve that problem? > It is a little frustrating > that s390 and friends could join, no questions ask, but AMD64 gets > the third degree. I understand the frustration, but treating the people who are trying to help you like they're your enemies is not a good way to deal with it. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
