[csw-maintainers] Package policy questions

[Roger Håkansson]

I'm packaging a new version of an orphaned package which have a optional 
dependency package where upstream requires v8plus to build.
(They write in the README file that their package requires v8plus and 
will not build on v8)

The question is what to do in cases like this?
Build the first package without this optional (but for some users 
wanted) dependency package or build a package which can only be run on 
machines with v8plus?
This would mean that we limit our users to machines with UltraSparc 
CPU's (or newer) which I can't seem to be a big problem (anyone still 
using old SS10/SS5/SS20's must be pain lovers...) today.




Next issue...
I think I've read somewhere that we should strive to build all packages 
with as many options enabled as possible, which seems like a good idea.
But what about delivering different functionality in the same package 
for 32/64-bit binaries?
I've been looking into enabling 64-bit support for ImageMagick, but the 
dependency chain is starting to get huge and when that list include 
packages like libbonobo2 it becomes a bit tricky.
The amount of packages affected by an upgrade of for example libbonobo2 
are huge.
On the other hand, it seems silly to start gar-ifying current versions 
of some of those packages, which are several years old, just to get 
64bit support.

So the question is, what is the preferred solution, skip 64bit until all 
dependencies have been fixed or build a package with different features 
enabled for 32 and 64-bit?