Howto handle multilib conflict?

[Adam Williamson]

On Sat, 2009-10-10 at 18:05 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Oct 2009 07:47:59 -0700, Adam wrote:
> 
> > Of course, that turns the larger question into 'why do we put i686
> > -devel packages in the x86-64 repo, not just the lib packages',
> 
> Because not all files in -devel packages cover multiple target
> platforms. Example: You could not build for i686 with headers that
> are specific to x86_64, and you would also need the .so symlinks for
> libraries in the appropriate libdir.

Well, that's only valid if we actually do anything to ensure multilib
compilation actually *works*, right now all we enforce is that the
packages don't conflict (which isn't the same thing at all). I hope I'm
not dragging him into the conversation unwillingly, but Colin Walters
raised those points on IRC:

<walters> well, what's the ultimate goal?  just avoiding the OS
exploding if you happen to somehow get an i386 -devel?  or actually be
able to compile 32 bit on 64 hosts?
<walters> those are pretty different things

...

<walters> people keep trying to scope creep multilib to include
compilation, which we need to clamp down on, and tell them to use mock
<Oxf13> well last time we tried to make major changes to our multilib
strategy, Jeremy was the one to play Captain No
 and he's gone now, so....

I guess the point is that if we actually intend to support 'you can
cross-compile with any -devel package from another arch that's included
in the repository' we may need more strict policies / work to ensure
that's actually possible, and if we intend *not* to support that, but
rather tell people to use mock, there's no reason to include -devel
packages in multilib.

-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net