[pkg-wine-party] dpkg: needs error message / help for 'Multi-Arch: allowed' packages on un-multiarched systems

[Michael Gilbert]

package: dpkg
version: 1.16.4.1
severity: important
user: multiarch-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org
usertags: multiarch

Hi,

wine is now making use of the 'Multi-Arch: allowed' feature to provide
i386 dependencies for an amd64 virtual package.  Unfortunately, this
setup is leading to a lot of bug reports from users that don't realize
that they need to manually enable multiarch support first:
http://bugs.debian.org/676457
http://bugs.debian.org/676635

I wonder if most of this confusion could be avoided if dpkg were a bit
more informative in cases where the user was trying to install
'Multi-Arch: allowed' packages, but hadn't yet enabled multiarch?

A useful error message / help would include some of the info on the
apt and dpkg configuration steps in the multiarch user howto:
http://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/HOWTO

Best wishes,
Mike