To: Development discussions related to Fedora Core <fedora-devel-list redhat com>
Subject: Re: default rpm query format on x86_64
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 14:06:46 -0600
Bernardo Innocenti wrote:
This program was broken already on multiarch platforms because
it would consider an i386 package a candidate for upgrading
an x86_64 package. I've now teached it to consider architectures
instead of stripping them away.
Which brings up a good point--
x86_64 systems (and perhaps other multiarch platforms) are becoming much more
common, and the trend will only increase. By keeping the arch out of the
default query format, we're only encouraging script developers to ignore
package architectures. That's bad.
It is quite possible that changing the default is the Right Thing to do, and
would lead to fewer problems altogether down the road--even though it may
force developers to modify their scripts. Perhaps in the process these
developers will take a moment to think about how their process would work on a
multiarch system.
RedHat has a proud history of breaking backward compatibility when the
circumstances demand. The negative impact of such this change would probably
be minimal and short-lived, and overall I think it would be worth it. However,
this sort of change should be made as part of a new release. Best to wait till
FC5.