Subpackages with different architectures

[Jeff Pitman]

On 1/14/06, Roozbeh Pournader <roozbeh at farsiweb.info> wrote:
> >From what I have learned searching the web, it seems that using a single
> spec file to build one noarch subpackage and another arch-specific one
> in a single is impossible. Is that right, or I was misled? Assuming I
> was right in deducing so, I have questions regarding the packaging of
> MediaWiki.

You are correct, you cannot have sub-packages as different archs
within the same context and have a one pass rpmbuild generate them.
You can hack a .spec to have multiple archs via %ifarch; however, this
requires multiple passes of rpmbuild to get all packages built. For
example, kernel does this for documentation.

>
> The package is mostly straight-forward PHP, but also includes a certain
> feature for handling mathematical formulas (that is turned off in the
> default configuration). That feature is implemented as a binary, and has
> dependencies on LaTeX, dvips, and ImageMagick, which have large
> dependencies themselves.
>
> I tried packaging the formula support as a subpackage, but I can't
> make the main package noarch and the -math subpackage arch-dependent. I
> have three choices:
>
> 1) Get along with an arch-independent RPM package marked as
> arch-dependent.
>
> 2) Forget subpackages and make them one RPM with unified dependencies.

You could pick this if: 1) it doesn't take much space, and 2) most
user's will use the component anyway.

> 3) Make these two different SPEC files. (This would create a burden on
> me for maintaining the two in sync, so I guess I should only do this if
> the other two options are unacceptable.)
>
> What do you think I should do? Or am I missing a fourth and better path?

The fourth would be to consider a two pass scenario. I'm not willing
to say it's better though.

--
-jeff