[arch-dev-public] Multilib on Archlinux x86_64

[Daniel Isenmann]

On Tue, 8 Jul 2008 14:25:44 -0500
"Aaron Griffin" <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 1:36 PM, Thomas Bächler <thomas at archlinux.org>
> wrote:
> > Andreas Radke schrieb:
> >> I give you a strict -1 for any 32bit compat stuff in our officially
> >> supported repos as I already told you in private discussions. I've
> >> spent several weeks if not even months to make it as clean as
> >> possible.
> >
> > What you are saying is that by adding an extra capability (again,
> > separate repository, nothing to pollute core or extra in any way),
> > we destroy the clean-ness of your so clean (and yeah, it is clean)
> > system. That's just irrational.
> >
> > The fact that you don't quote a single line from my posting tells
> > me that you haven't even read any of my propositions. Why don't you
> > give technical arguments instead of making this personal?
> >
> > The reason I want to maintain this on our ftp is that I want it to
> > be easily accessible to our devs and users, as I can't maintain it
> > alone. The reason I don't want this (at least the core of it) in
> > community is that I want it to be separate from the rest.
> >
> > Besides, unless you want to maintain the packages or use them by
> > activating the repository in pacman.conf, you won't even notice
> > it's there.
> 
> I have to side with Thomas here on the fact that no technical
> arguments were brought up. That irks me just a bit - that "no because
> no" seems to be a valid reason. It's not.
> 
> That said, I am very very neutral on this. Thomas' plan does not
> integrate anything at all, it just puts some 32bit libs in a parallel
> repo for people to use if they want to (read: users can choose). A
> pristine system is all well and good, but as we can all tell from the
> existence of the lib32- packages in community, it's not what everyone
> wants. What Thomas is proposing is keeping the pristine system
> pristine unless someone wants to install the 32bit stuff. I don't have
> a problem with this rationale.
> 
> *But* I think it is a bit important that we look at why we're doing
> this - for a handful (5 or 6) closed source apps. flash, teamspeak,
> skype, google-earth (and wine). It seems like a lot of work for a
> handful of apps. That's why I'm neutral on this. I think the rationale
> is sound, but it sounds like a lot of forward MOTION for little
> forward PROGRESS.

I really don't see the advantage to do this. Like Aaron said, there are
just about 5-6 apps, which are not available on x86_64. The next thing
is, why should we support it official? There are users out there which
are happy with the lib32-* packages in community. The TUs are doing a
great job on this. Why should we (we seen as dev) support those stuff?
Why not bringing your stuff into community as a replacement for the
lib32-* packages? In my opinion setting up an additional official
repo just for multilib  is too much work, which isn't needed (MY
opinion).

There is a big -1 from my side.

Daniel