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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Marcus Brinkmann The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de/