[pacman-dev] $ARCH suffix on packages

[Aaron Griffin]

On 10/10/06, Dale Blount <dale at archlinux.org> wrote:
> Say I have more than one architecture running Arch (I do).  Say I have
> an nfs mounted home directory (I do).  Say I have packages lying around
> in my homedir (I do).  It'd be nice to know at a glance which box(es)
> the package could be installed on without stretching my already
> over-stuffed memory.

On 10/10/06, Christian Hamar <krics at gds.hu> wrote:
> In my opinion if a user pulls a package from anywhere, from web or from
> ftp or just he is store packages in cd or dvd, etc, then he/she can see
> that what is this pack. I mean for which architecture. Just seeing the
> filename and you know that foo-1.0-1-x86_64 is for x86_64 archs, -i686
> for i686 archs. So users not confused to see foo-1.0-1 and foo-1.0-1 and
> user just thinks, "what the hell, two same package? install that one
> then" And maybe he install an i686 package to x86_64 arch :)


So ok, I was going the wrong route when thinking about this.  Nothing
is really gained from pacman's perspective, and pacman doesn't require
it in any way, it just alleviates confusion for users and packagers
and any other thing that consumes the packages that is NOT written in
a programming language (like me, though some may argue I AM, in
fact,written in a programming language, called DNA, but I digress....)

Coming at it from this angle, I think this may actually be a good idea
across the board.  Xentac, do you remember where the argument ended up
when this was brought up before?

Being that pacman3 will probably be side-by-side installed with
pacman2 for a bit, while we iron things out, is there a way to smooth
the transition?  Perhaps a temporary "check for the arch version, if
not found, try without the arch name" until we can move everything
over... assuming, of course, that we do move to this scheme.

PS I'm thinking of doing a side-by-side pacman3 RC in [unstable]
sometime between wed and fri, for any archers interested....