Duplicated packages on x86_64

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at>

| It does happen. It's a regression in FC6 (from FC5). It's already in Bugzilla:
| https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=209306

Wow.  That is really bad.  Doubly so for not being recognized as such
by the maintainer.

[I recently installed FC6 x86_64 and got waay too many packages
installed for both architectures.  I understand libraries being
installed for both but not application programs.  The only application
programs that I need in i386 (and would also like in x86_64) are those
that take pluggins that come for only i386 (Flash and codec
limitations dictate need for i386 browsers and media players).  Why
did the installation waste so much space on useless duplication?
Relevance to this thread: apparently I cannot safely fix the problem
manually!]

Naive opinion:

I don't know what skipDirs is exactly, but it seems like the wrong
approach.  Surely there should be provision in RPM for files belonging to two
packages, files that can only be deleted if both packages are removed.

Of course that makes updating rather tricky.  Both packages would need
to be updated simultaneously (i.e. in the same transaction) unless
the file were unchanged.  But surely that is the correct approach.

Which brings me to this longstanding symptom of the fact that rpm does
not understand file sharing:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=128622