yum and multiple architectures... help!

[Andrea]

Hi,

I've been trying to understand how yum is meant to work when a system supports multiple architectures.

My case is Fedora 8 on PS3, architectures ppc and ppc64.

Example 1 (gdb):

1) who owns /usr/bin/gdb

[root at ps3 ~]# rpm -q -f $(which gdb) --queryformat 
'%{Name},"%{Version}","%{Vendor}","%{Group}","%{License}",%{Arch}"\n'
gdb,"6.6","Fedora Project","Development/Debuggers","GPL",ppc"
gdb,"6.6","Fedora Project","Development/Debuggers","GPL",ppc64"

2) which gdb is it?
[root at ps3 ~]# file $(which gdb)
/usr/bin/gdb: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, PowerPC or cisco 4500, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked 
(uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.9, stripped

3) how do I get gdb.ppc64?
The only way I've found is: remove both of them, reinstall gdb.ppc64. It does not look right to me!
It should at least complain!
They are not the same. gdb.ppc only debugs 32bit apps, while gdb.ppc64 works for 64bit apps!

I thought that there cannot be 2 packages providing the same file as in the following:

Example 2 (alsa-lib-devel):

1) which alsa-lib-devel do I have already?

[root at ps3 ~]# rpm -q alsa-lib-devel --queryformat 
'%{Name},"%{Version}","%{Vendor}","%{Group}","%{License}",%{Arch}"\n'
alsa-lib-devel,"1.0.15","Fedora Project","Development/Libraries","LGPLv2+",ppc64"

2) let's add the ppc version

[root at ps3 ~]# yum install alsa-lib-devel.ppc
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package alsa-lib-devel.ppc 0:1.0.15-1.fc8 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

=============================================================================
  Package                 Arch       Version          Repository        Size
=============================================================================
Installing:
  alsa-lib-devel          ppc        1.0.15-1.fc8     fedora            989 k

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install      1 Package(s)
Update       0 Package(s)
Remove       0 Package(s)

Total download size: 989 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test


Transaction Check Error:
   file /usr/share/doc/alsa-lib-devel-1.0.15/doxygen/html/_2test_2latency_8c-example.html from 
install of alsa-lib-devel-1.0.15-1.fc8.ppc conflicts with file from package 
alsa-lib-devel-1.0.15-1.fc8.ppc64

and so on for many other files.

How it is meant to be used?

Andrea