Getting multiarch dpkg into Debian

Posted Mar 7, 2012 20:58 UTC (Wed) by Tobu (subscriber, #24111)
In reply to: Getting multiarch dpkg into Debian by walex
Parent article: Getting multiarch dpkg into Debian

So far we have three design choices: package states keyed by a name, by a (name, arch) tuple, and by a (name, arch, version) tuple.

Keying by name is simple and robust: packages with different names must agree not to own the same file names.

Keying by version is tricky and bug-prone: if versions are to be parallel installable, different versions of a package either need to not own the same files, or to keep identical contents in files that didn't move. This doesn't seem compatible with shipping changelogs or common resources.

Keying by arch while requiring that the versions stay locked, on the other hand, is safe: the files were built from the same source, so files that are shared across architectures will easily be identical; architecture-dependent files will need to use paths that embed the architecture name.