Hi debian-dpkg, Several people have been working on a project we've been calling "multiarch", to seamlessly support running applications for multiple different binary targets on the same system. The main example being running i386-linux-gnu applications on amd64-linux-gnu systems, but many other working combinations exist. More info on Debian's multiarch efforts at
http://wiki.debian.org/multiarch Part of implementing multiarch requires changes to dpkg. My employer, HP, has been working with Canonical Ltd. to investigate potential implementation strategies. This resulted in the following report, http://multiarch.alioth.debian.org/multiarch-hp-report.pdf One of the possible implementation strategies, and the one which HP/Canonical feel holds the most promise, involves adding some new features to the package manager. Some of these features were mentioned in Scott James Remnant's dpkg2.0 talk at debconf5 and probably on this list and IRC, you may have already heard about them. In preparation for implementing these features, Scott has prepared a design document for review http://multiarch.alioth.debian.org/dpkg2.pdf As described in the document, this specification is intended to be agnostic with respect to on-disk package format, package metadata (except for an important few), O/S distribution, higher level tools like apt/smart, etc. Think of this as a design specification for "The next generation package manager". Please review and provide feedback and if you're interested in helping out step up and get involved. I think you'll agree some of these new feature are really cool and should be fun to work on. Thanks, -- Tollef Fog Heen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> dann frazier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Lamont Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Scott James Remnant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Matt Taggart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Matt Zimmerman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
