Hello, ... I am the maintainer of the ocaml package, which contains an ocaml compiler suite able to build either bytecode executables to be run on a virtual machine or native code exectuables. The native code compiler is available only on some arches (alpha arm i386 ia64 powerpc sparc) and the bytecode executables are arch independent, so the same package can run on all arches, but is slower than the native code version.
Upto now, packages (like advi, hevea, coq to name just a few) were all arch: any, and the executable built was the native code version on the arches supporting it and the bytecode version on the other arches. This has as result that there were multiple copies of exactly the same packages, which is a waste of space as well as a uneedfull use of the buildd resources (in particular for the slower arches), so we decided to try to build the bytecode version arch: all and the native code version for the arches that support it. Now, the problem is when we do that, there will be two packages available for the arches supporting the native code compilers, which will be made to both provide the same virtual package. The behavior we want, so that it is transparent to our user, is to install the the native package when it is available, and the bytecode package if not. The apt-get man page says that for build-depends, apt-get will choose a random package from the packages providing the virtual package, but it seems that apt-get install will refuse to install a virtual package, but provide a choice of packages providing the virtual package. BTW, it would be nice to have the short description shown in addition to the package name and version. Matthias Urlich suggested to me that a priority field or something such in the .dsc file could solve my problem. I am ready to implement this (altough i don't have much time, but i don't need this in a hurry anyway), but would like to get opinions from the apt-get maintainers on this subject. Well, particularly, if you think this will break things and is a stupid idea or something such, i would like to know before i invest time in this. Also, i may be willing to look at the versioned virtual depends while i am at it also. Is there any material already available or a hint at a thread about it ? I did look at the last 3 month of the deity mailing list, but didn't find anything relevant, and this list does not appear to be searchable. Friendly, Sven Luther
