Hi Maximiliano,
On Thursday, 30 November 2017 1:50 AM, Maximiliano Curia wrote:
>cinnamon-doc is an arch:all package, I'm not sure what kind of duplication
>check you are using, but what's the gain on tagging m-a: foreign to arch: all
>packages? Wouldn't it be better to consider arch:all packages as non
>duplicates?
Debian hosts its own file duplication detector, which, amongst other tasks,
analyzes packages for Multi-Arch properties. See [1] for more information.
While it is true that Architecture: all packages are unique, Debian treats
these packages as native architecture packages after installation. This
means Architecture: all packages cannot satisfy dependencies from
foreign architectures without the M-A: foreign marking.
Again, see [1] for more information.
While this is less of an issue with -doc packages, there is still a
noticeable difference package manager behaviour.
If you install cinnamon-doc on amd64, for example, and then try to
install cinnamon-doc:i386, apt outputs:
Package cinnamon-doc:i386 is not available, but is referred to by
another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package 'cinnamon-doc:i386' has no installation candidate
Once the package is marked Multi-Arch: foreign, however, apt does not
try to install an architecture-specific variant of the package, because apt
knows that the M-A: foreign variant is valid for any architecture.
[1] https://wiki.debian.org/MultiArch/Hints
--
Hugh McMaster
