yum pulling in 386 packages

[Richi Plana]

On Mon, 2007-09-24 at 18:08 +0200, dragoran wrote:
> Steve Grubb wrote:
> > If you are a developer and  *want* the ability to do cross compiling, then I 
> > could see those people wanting multilib. I think the common case is people 
> > want a pure 64 or 32 bit machine so they have more free diskspace and quicker 
> > updates and less hassle when it goes wrong.
> >   
> -1
> 
> no if someone wants a pure 64 bit system he should have a option to do 
> that. multilib is not a bad thing but it just lets you install and run 
> 32bit apps on your 64bit system.
> please don't go down to no multilib and start using chroot hacks...
> thats WRONG ...

THAT'S the kind of thinking I like! Where people don't bash other
people's preferences but instead leave them options. It's good for a
distro like Fedora to choose one default since it simplifies things for
the majority of people, but care should be taken to leave things open
for other options and, at times, to even aid in the selection of other
options. Sometimes it's just so easy to fall into the exclusive
way-of-thinking, particularly when either a personal preference is
perceived to be threatened or if there's pressure to get something out
and the easy choice seems so attractive.

> the only thing that needs to be fixed here is dont install both archs 
> when somebody wants to install an app.
> yum install foo -> install the default arch only
> yum install foo.i386 install foo.i386 and its deps (may also be 32 bit 
> or noarch).

Agree with there being a "default" during install and when no arch is
specified, but read my previous post on existing problems with
multi-arch installs.

Besides ... going back to i386-x86_64 installs specifically ... I think
it has always been the idea to eventually drop the default install of
i386 packages. Having them there would just ease transitions ...
particularly with many i386, binary-only packages. At least that was my
impression. After having used Fedora x86_64 for the last year or so, I
can say that I can live with just an x86_64-install only and add
packages when needed (nspluginwrapper and maybe SDL libstdc++ for some
games for me).
--

Richi Plana