[ubuntu-dev] Bug#725720: gdebi should offer to enable support for foreign architecture if needed

[Julian Andres Klode]

Control: severity -1 wishlist
Control: clone -1 -2
Control: reassign -2 gdebi
Control: retitle -2 gdebi: Could add missing architectures

On Mon, Oct 07, 2013 at 07:53:12PM +0200, Francois Gouget wrote:
> Package: gdebi
> Version: 0.9.1
> Severity: normal
> 
> Dear Maintainer,
> 
> On a default 64-bit Debian installation support for 32-bit 
> packages is not enabled, that is 'dpkg 
> --print-foreign-architectures' returns nothing. So when a user 
> gets a 32-bit package and opens it in gdebi the only result is:
> 
>    Error: Wrong architecture 'i386'

I can change the message to mention dpkg --add-architecture,
but there is no UI for that.

> 
> This then leaves it up to the user to search the web and 
> struggle with the command line to figure out how to enable 
> support for 32-bit packages.
> 
> So it would be much better if gdebi provided a simple way to do 
> so. This would likely end up running something like 'sudo dpkg 
> --add-architecture i386 ; sudo apt-get update' behind the scenes 
> (note that the 'apt-get update' is necessary to get that 
> architecture's list of packages so dependencies can then be 
> resolved).

This would be something that gdebi could do. IIRC, gdebi even runs
as root instead of using dbus, so it could in theory implement that
itself. We do not provide any GTK+3 dialogs in python-apt, though,
but I'd merge some if they look good.

-- 
Julian Andres Klode  - Debian Developer, Ubuntu Member

See http://wiki.debian.org/JulianAndresKlode and http://jak-linux.org/.

Please do not top-post if possible.