Package: apt Version: 1.8.2 Severity: wishlist Control: block 947244 by -1 thanks
Hi, (filing against the version in stable because I can reproduce it there and my unstable machine is broken at the moment so I can't verify that it still exists in unstable, but presumably this should not be fixed in stable...) The "Architectures:" key in a .sources file (or the "arch=" in a .list file) defaults to the value of APT::Architectures, which defaults to the architectures enabled on the system. However, when an explicit list of architectures is configured for a repository, then this overrides the default value, regardless of whether the extra architectures are enabled for the system. It is possible to modify the default by way of Architectures-Add and Architectures-Remove, but that requires knowledge of which architectures are enabled on the system. It would be useful to have a configuration value that says "this repository has these architectures available" (let's say we call that "Architectures-Available:"), so that if, say, APT::Architecture contains "i386 amd64 riscv64", and "Architectures-Available" contains "i386 amd64", the result would be as though "Architectures-Remove: riscv64" were specified; but if "Architectures-Available" instead contains "i386 amd64 riscv64 armhf", then the result would be as though no Architectures-* keys were specified at all, and indexes files for i386, amd64, and riscv64 (but not armhf) will be downloaded. The alternatives currently are to either produce a warning message that a particular architecture is not enabled for a repository, to download more than is needed, or to create a configuration file that depends on state outside of the configuration file itself, which for a tool like extrepo is suboptimal. Thanks for considering, -- <Lo-lan-do> Home is where you have to wash the dishes. -- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22