[pkg-wine-party] Bug#676457: migration path from non multiarch to multiarch wine

[Stephen Kitt]

Hi,

On Sat, Jun 09, 2012 at 10:52:43AM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 09, 2012 at 03:37:10AM -0400, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> > > I don't see amd64 packages in pool. The latest package version I see in pool
> > > is wine-bin_1.4-0.3_amd64.deb. The same with other wine packages for
> > > amd64 arch.
> > 
> > That is because the package has been "multiarched."  In other words,
> > the i386 packages now satisfy the amd64 dependencies.
> 
> Right, and indeed it works perfectly after adding i386 as a foreign
> architecture to dpkg. But I'm pretty sure many users will stumble upon
> the above problem during upgrades, because there is no hint whatsoever
> (at least using apt or aptitude) that the user should do something
> manual.
> 
> So the question is, I guess: what's the migration path from non
> multiarch wine to multiarch wine?
> 
> I guess a NEWS.Debian entry telling users what they should do would be a
> good start, but I'm not sure it would be enough to shield you from tons
> of bug reports like this one :-)

Indeed, and by that stage it's too late to do anything about it anyway
- apt-get/aptitude will always have trouble dealing with the upgrade,
and for users who haven't previously added the appropriate foreign
architecture the package will either be removed or held, so
NEWS.Debian won't be displayed...

There's another issue too: wine-gecko-1.4 build-depends on wine-bin,
and has to be built on a 64-bit platform; as far as I'm aware buildds
won't have any foreign architectures for the foreseeable future! (The
solution here doesn't involve a transition path: I think having 64-bit
wine would do the trick.)

In fact might not having a 64-bit wine handle all the multi-arch
problems? *-amd64 users would be able to upgrade without
apt-get/aptitude complaining, NEWS.Debian would be displayed to most
users with apt-listbugs installed, and a reportbug template could be
used to reduce the number of bugs reported because 32-bit Windows
software stops working ("add i386 as a foreign architecture and
install wine:i386").

Regards,

Stephen
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