http://raw.no/debian/amd64-multiarch-3.txt contains a proposal for multiarch support on Debian. The basic idea would be that libraries will be installed in /lib/archstring and binaries installed as usual. Multiple library packages could be installed simultaneously, but only one of each binary package.
Why is this relevant? The obvious application to BSD ports is that it allows the use of Linux binaries without having any BSD-specific hacking. Linux-i386 (or whatever) libraries would go in /lib/linux-i386 and Linux binary packages could then be installed directly. This would allow for a much simpler bootstrapping of a port. Base can be ported without major effort. From that stage on, Linux packages could then be installed as a stop-gap - over time, more awkward packages can be transitioned to being BSD native. There's something of a lag here. dpkg support for this functionality is unlikely to make sarge, so will have to wait until sarge+1, and packages requiring this functionality will have to wait until sarge+2 as a result. There's some interest in at least providing a sufficiently large number of packages to demonstrate proof of concept rather earlier than that, though. How do people feel about this sort of thing? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
