--- Karolina Lindqvist <karolina.lindqvist@kramnet.se> wrote:
Actually, I added i586 when I did it the last time, one year ago, with the result that it was practically hopeless to diff with the original, when doing an update with "abs". So this time, I just ignore to put in i586, making it easier with upgrades.
Yes, you will have to do this search-and-replace i686->i586 after every time you update abs.
I still question the whole purpose of the arch= tag, if it means that it is "certified" by the developers. All files downloaded with abs are certified by the developers, so what is the big deal? And makeworld does not exclude building packages that are not for the architecture.
The point is that the developers don't want to get a bunch of bug reports for things that might be i586-specific problems. They are saying "we've tested the package that is built using this PKGBUILD on i686 and/or x86_64, and if you have a problem with it let us know, but if you use this PKGBUILD to build for some other architecture, you're on your own". Though I agree that makepkg just aborting on i586 is kind of pointless, just a nice big warning would suffice. From previous posts I assume this will change in future versions of makepkg.
And then, what does it mean for AUR, if everyone are forced to put the tag in, but now not meaning that it is certified by the developers anymore?
I assume AUR maintainers are free to put whatever they like in the arch tag -- it's up to them what architectures they want to support for their specific package.
I think a better usage would be that the package is tried and works and is meaningful on that architecture.
Well, that's exactly what it means now. But the devs don't want to go to the work of doing that on i586, because arch is an i686/x86_64-optimized distribution, and has never claimed to be "tried and working" on i586. Get a sneak peak at messages with a handy reading pane with All new Yahoo! Mail: http://mail.yahoo.ca