x86_32 yum $basearch

[Josh Boyer]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 09:20:26AM -0500, seth vidal wrote:
>On Fri, 2009-02-20 at 14:12 +0000, Paul Howarth wrote:
>> seth vidal wrote:
>> > On Fri, 2009-02-20 at 09:42 +0000, Paul Howarth wrote:
>> >> Now that Fedora 11 x86_32 is going to be based on i586 packages rather 
>> >> than i386 packages, does it follow that yum's $basearch will change from 
>> >> i386 to i586 and hence repository directory layouts changing too, or 
>> >> will it stay at i386?
>> >>
>> > 
>> > I don't think it will change. For a few reasons:
>> > 
>> > 1. non-fedora repos
>> > 2. non-fedora distros
>> > 3. this is why we also have $arch in addition to $basearch
>> > 
>> > make sense?
>> 
>> Certainly from the point of view of being the least disruptive option; 
>> it'll just look a bit strange having i386 "Everything" repos with no 
>> i386 packages in them...
>
>Which is why we shouldn't have i386 repos. We should switch
>fedora-release to using $arch and an i586 repo which is a symlink to the
>i686 repo. Then when we phase out i586 in F12, we just remove the i586
>symlink. That way, if anyone wants to maintain a build of fedora for
>i586 or lesser machines then they can do so in the i586 path using
>$arch.

Or you could just have:

x86
x86_64
ppc
ppc64
sparc
sparc64

etc.

Naming repos after specific arches just seems like pain.  This is
one area where ppc does things right.  You don't see things like:

604e
75xx

for ppc32, or:

970
power3
power4
power5

for ppc64.

I'll probably get the "tradition" and "you don't know what you're
talking about" arguments thrown at me.  My opinions won't change :).

josh