[Glibc-bsd-devel] Re: Use of negated arches for dpkg dependencies

[Marcus Brinkmann]

On Sun, Oct 05, 2003 at 11:58:02AM +0000, Robert Millan wrote:
> The general tendency is adding our dpkg arch to the list of _negated_ arches,
> e.g: [!hurd-i386 !freebsd-i386 !netbsd-i386].
> 
> This will get weird when we have 13 arches or so, and by the time we reach
> that we'd have to send a new patch every time we start another port.
>
> So I suggest that we carry that task where it belongs to. Instead of
> maintaining a list of non-linux arches, maintain a list of linux arches, e.g:
> 
> [alpha amd64 arm hppa i386 ia64 m68k mips mipsel powerpc s390 sh sparc]
> 
> Sounds overkill adding 13 arches at this time, but at some point the negated
> list will outgrow the standard one, and then it'll look even worse.

The right solution is of course to be able to specify patterns like
"*-linux-gnu".  As for what is done today: As you rightly point out, today
the list of GNU/Linux arches is 4 times as long as the number of
non-GNU/Linux arches, so you will have a hard time convincing package
maintainers or Debian policy that this change is desired.  And given that
both solutions are "wrong", and the first one is the less ugly _today_, I
don't see any reason for change.

Again, the right solution is to fix this architecture mess once and for all
by not using a simple matched string for both the cpu and the OS.

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' GNU      http://www.gnu.org    marcus@gnu.org
Marcus Brinkmann              The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de/