Tyler Larson wrote:
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.
Agreed.
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.
The easy fix requires a one-line change to specify the query format.
My script required more work because it really needed to consider
the architecture when comparing packages.
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.
I also hope FC5 will introduce the ability to upgrade an i386
system to x86_64.
I did it manually for my workstation and it required just
a single reboot to install the 64bit kernel.
Everything else I could do by forcing RPM to do what I meant
despite I was apparently breaking dependencies and installing
conflicting files.
Now my migration to 64bit is 90% complete. I sometimes find
yet another i386 package I forgot to upgrade. Finding them
all is difficult because they still work fine :-)
--
// Bernardo Innocenti - Develer S.r.l., R&D dept.
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