[Debian-ppc64-devel] Re: ppc64 archive bloating alioth disk ...

[Andreas Jochens]

On 05-Sep-20 21:09, Sven Luther wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 20, 2005 at 07:51:30PM +0200, Andreas Jochens wrote:
> We already have a biarch glibc, so that you can actually build the libraries
> and stuff yourself.

Unfortunately it is not that easy because every library package I want 
to build has to be patched for the biarch build. Moreover the 
necessary patches are different for each packages and also sometimes
very complicated. I simply have not the time and resources to do this 
myself.

> > I think it will be a _major_ task to create any kind of "biarch setup" 
> > for a reasonable set of libraries for Debian. Many people have already 
> > tried that and nobody had any success with this so far. 
> 
> Ah, yes ? Who tried it ? 

The sparc/sparc64, s390/s390x, hppa/hppa64 ports and most intensly 
the early amd64 biarch porting efforts. Neither of these ports has 
actually reached more than libc, despite the fact that those efforts 
have been started years ago. It is _difficult_.

> Oh,  libz and libncurses too ? I thought only the base toolchain was biarch,
> see it has already started.

libz had a biarch infrastructure for i386/amd64 and I filed a patch
to the BTS which extended this to powerpc/ppc64. That patch was 
accepted.

> > The better approach is the one that is called 'multiarch'. That approach 
> > will allow to install packages that have been built for a different 
> > architecture, i.e. ppc64 packages on powerpc and amd64 packages on i386
> > and vice versa. That approach needs a native ppc64 package archive to 
> > provide the ppc64 packages that can be installed on powerpc.
> 
> Sure, but will it be ready for the etch timeframe ? I have seen no sign or it
> being near mature enough to consider that, and i get the feeling that it might
> well be possible for etch+1 timeframe.

Multiarch will not be ready for etch. But the same is true for a real
biarch setup with a reasonable set of 64-bit packages.

> And then you have to consider the archive problems, even now as we speak,
> amd64 is not properly integrated in the main archives, and so i don't see a
> near future with ppc64 inclusion, while a biarch setup would need no such
> trouble, so it is also more pragmatic to go this way.

I never understood why amd64 had so much problems to get into 
unstable and why it is still not in unstable now. However, it is
not that bad if a reliable archive is hosted on a separate machine.
The amd64 port is quite successful with this. Finally, I like to
build the packages that I use on my own machines from source anyway.
So I see the Debian archive more as a source archive which should
provide source packages that can be built automatically for any
architecture. This is working quite well for ppc64.

> And if you would start to propose us an extensive list of those libraries you
> need, we could go somewhere, second time i ask you, or maybe third time, but
> you didn't provide even a single such library.

OK, here is a small list. As a minimal requirement I need to link a 
64-bit client/server database application to 'libssl' for secure 
communication over a TCP channel and to 'libx11' to display things on 
the user screen. It would be nice if you could make those two libraries 
available as 64-bit biarch packages. This would of course also be 
interesting for i386/amd64. 

This is not some arbitrary request. I am talking about a real application
that is used for serious business purposes and that actually benefits from 
a 64-bit environment.

Regards
Andreas Jochens