[csw-maintainers] ARCH=all packages

[Trygve Laugstøl]

Philip Brown wrote:
> Peter B. and I are having a disagreement about the concept of ARCH=all
> packages, so I thought I would bring the discussion here.
> 
> The issue is that he wishes to bundle specific binaries for wget in his
> pkgutil package, AND call it ARCH=all.
> (he wants to bundle one for sparc and one for x86)
> 
> I suggested that he either remove the binaries and use pure perl,
> (either with a full wget replacement, or to use it to download
>  "the appropriate binary")
> or split it up into two separate packages, with appropriate ARCH settings
> for the binary he includes in each one.
> 
> He refuses to take either path, or offer a third one.
> 
> Our standards pages say,
> 
> http://www.opencsw.org/standards/build
> "{ARCH} is usually the output of `uname -p`. But for certain special
>  packages that run on all solaris hardware, or are otherwise
>  architecture-neutral, it may be preferable to have ARCH=all "
> 
> I say that this means that archtecture specific binaries, should not be in
> "ARCH=all" packages. Even if you do not agree that the words clearly state
> that, it was certainly my INTENTION when I wrote the standard. 
> I wanted "ARCH=all" to clearly indicate, "this package will work
> EVERYWHERE, it will never need recompiling, and it is safe to be shared in
> some kind of NFS /opt/csw for any and all solaris machines to use."
> 
> In other words, ARCH=all should be reserved for things like raw
> arch-neutral data files, docs, java, and shellscripts/perl/python.
> 
> (I originally intended to use "ARCH=any"... however, I followed sun's
>  lead; sun uses ARCH=all, and does not use ARCH=any, to the best
>  of my knowlege, for this purpose)
> 
> 
> What are peoples' comments on this?

Another option:

  * Let pkgtool depend on the Perl modules required to do HTTP/FTP stuff
  * Create (if not already) packages for the modules
  * Create a pkg stream that includes all the packages and make that 
downloadable from the frontpage as a "getting started" tool like pkg-get.
  * PROFIT!

The added bonus here is that the pkgtool code and package is kept clean, 
  and once the system is bootstrapped it will be updated like any other 
package.

--
Trygve