[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#682207: Bug#682207: Bug#682207: octave: using dpkg-architecture at run time is a bad idea

[Mike Miller]

On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 01:50:49PM +0200, Sébastien Villemot wrote:
> Andreas Beckmann <debian at abeckmann.de> writes:
> 
> > octave depends on dpkg-dev in order to use dpkg-architecture at runtime.
> > This is a bad idea. The path that is being computed in this way needs to
> > be built into the binary.
> >
> > The current approach will fail in a multiarch installation of octave:
> > dpkg-architecture will report information about the primary
> > architecture, but octave may be installed from another architecture and
> > will be using a wrong path ...
> 
> My understanding is that it is not possible to install a non-multi-arch
> aware package (like octave) from another architecture, so that the
> scenario that you describe cannot materialize. Am I wrong?

This is not correct.  You can install a foreign architecture package as
long as all dependencies are either multi-arch-aware or there are no
conflicts.

# dpkg --print-architecture
amd64
# dpkg --print-foreign-architectures
i386
# apt-cache show screen | grep Multi
# apt-get install screen:i386
...
# screen --version
Screen version 4.01.00devel (GNU) 2-May-06
# file /usr/bin/screen
/usr/bin/screen: setgid ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ...

> > And the dpkg-dev dependency needs to be dropped.
> 
> Why is this dependency a problem (independently of the above issue)?

I don't think it's a policy problem, but it does pull in a lot of
unneeded packages.

In any event, here's a patch against the experimental branch that has
the added bonus of using built-in octave functions instead of system(),
ok to commit?

-- 
mike
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