[pkg-cinnamon] Bug#874330: cinnamon-doc: Please make the package multi-arch aware

[Hugh McMaster]

Hi Maximiliano,

On Thursday, 30 November 2017 1:50 AM, Maximiliano Curia wrote:
>cinnamon-doc is an arch:all package, I'm not sure what kind of duplication 
>check you are using, but what's the gain on tagging m-a: foreign to arch: all 
>packages? Wouldn't it be better to consider arch:all packages as non 
>duplicates?

Debian hosts its own file duplication detector, which, amongst other tasks, 
analyzes packages for Multi-Arch properties. See [1] for more information.

While it is true that Architecture: all packages are unique, Debian treats
these packages as native architecture packages after installation. This
means Architecture: all packages cannot satisfy dependencies from 
foreign architectures without the M-A: foreign marking.
Again, see [1] for more information.

While this is less of an issue with -doc packages, there is still a
noticeable difference package manager behaviour.

If you install cinnamon-doc on amd64, for example, and then try to
install cinnamon-doc:i386, apt outputs:

    Package cinnamon-doc:i386 is not available, but is referred to by 
    another package.
    This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
    is only available from another source

    E: Package 'cinnamon-doc:i386' has no installation candidate

Once the package is marked Multi-Arch: foreign, however, apt does not
try to install an architecture-specific variant of the package, because apt
knows that the M-A: foreign variant is valid for any architecture.

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/MultiArch/Hints

--
Hugh McMaster