Hi, Okay, let's get this more real. My use case: Run amd64 libreoffice on an i386 system. This is a very old install and I am trying to migrate it to amd64 step by step.
But the opposite could also be real: Having an amd64 system and trying to run the i386 binaries. For example to test them, without having to setup a full chroot and having to put everything needed in the chroot. Or having an x32 system and using libreoffice amd64 on it, because there's no x32 one. Anyway, let's continue: On Tue, Jan 24, 2017 at 09:05:10 +0100, Rene Engelhard wrote: > Hi, [...] > > Let's assume an amd64 system. untagged Arch=all packages > > have the implicit arch of the host system, so, they are > > amd64. > > And? Okay, and having enabled i386 binaries as a second allowed arch. So we have amd64 as primary arch and i386 as secondary. [...] > > If libreoffice-common is M-A-foreign, than > > libreoffice-common/all[amd64] is allowed to be used instaed > > of libreoffice-common/all[x32]. Then installing > > libreoffice-core would work. > > And if there was one, the same libreoffice-common would be just there > in the Packages files so you can install it as "normal". No. The libreoffice-common.deb is the same. True. But libreoffice-core from the secondary arch (i386 in our new example) depends on libreoffce-common. And it depends on lo-common either as i386, or as all+multi-arch-foreign. The current libreoffice-common will not fulfill that dependency. Yes, this is not really intuitive, because the same packages would work on a machine, where i386 is the primary arch. This was a long discussion, and there are complex reasons, why this is so. > This is a pure theoretical situation, given there isn't (and probably ever > won't) be a LO for x32. Hope it's now real enough? > > I am actually trying to run different versions of LO on my > > machine for different reasons. And this is currently > > stopping me from doing so. > > How? You can't run different versions of LO in the same paths parallel. But you could run the amd64 version on an x32 system, or, or ... I don't want to run amd64 and i386 on the same machine. > For the rest you can do whatever you want (chroots etc, whatever) If the core answer is "Use chroots", then we should have stopped multi-arch years ago. Really, there's a reason, why multi-arch exists and chroots aren't the answer to everything. > > > No, won't do that. > > > > What exactly would break? What is the real problem you're > > trying to avoid? > > I want to avoid useless Multi-Arch: specifiers. I don't think, they hurt a lot, really. > > fonts-opensymbol (from the same source package) is already > > marked Multi-Arch=foreign, so what's different here? > > In that it's a font also generally usable and at least in the past also > used as a (build-)dependency of other packages. Right, dependency in cross architecture situations. And that's exactly the same here. > Regards, > > Rene Cheers Elrond