[gentoo-amd64] Re: real multilib support

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Olivier Crête <tester@gentoo.org> posted
1174586568.5958.1.camel@localhost, excerpted below, on  Thu, 22 Mar 2007
14:02:47 -0400:

> On Thu, 2007-22-03 at 15:37 +0000, Simon Cooper wrote:
>> Whats the status of real, proper, compiled multilib support? Is it
>> 'being worked on'? Whats the main things holding it back at the moment?
> 
> The big missing element is proper portage support. Since it will have to
> maintain parallel dep trees for the difference architectures. And since
> portage is a complicated beast, I don't think any significant work has
> been done in that direction.

FWIW, there had been efforts in that direction, but they had been shelved 
for the time being due to the complexity and difficulty of introducing 
such a major new feature into portage without breaking existing working 
and depended upon code.  The story, even a short version, is long and 
complex and fraught with nasty politics, but ultimately comes to the 
still fresh (last few days) announcement of the first public draft of 
PMS, the package manager spec.  Once package manager API-0 is defined and 
adopted, and the council has made it a priority now so within a few 
months seems reasonable, it'll break a log jam that has been holding up 
all /sorts/ of stuff, including not only major features in portage 
itself, but the development of portage alternatives such as pkgcore and 
paludis as well.  The next 18 months or so could be /very/ interesting, 
as major new Gentoo tree and package manager features like full working 
multilib support that has been frozen for literally years, finally 
becomes possible to practically implement, as this log jam breaks up.

For more info, check the dev list, or look around some of the developer 
blogs.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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