[Yum] Re: installroot and arch

[Axel Thimm]

On Fri, Aug 27, 2004 at 07:47:38PM +0200, Bogdan Costescu wrote:
> Axel Thimm wrote:
> 
> > The main issue here is that rpm-cross compatibility would imply full
> > cross-compatibility on the binary runtime level, as rpm %post etc.
> > scripts may call arbitrary binary executables on the target host
> > (i.e. scrollkeeper, /sbin/install-info, ldconfig).
> 
> I agree with "arbitrary binary executables", but not with the examples
> that you gave. They are all basically updating some generic databases;
> the same would even apply to rpm itself and this would not be too
> difficult to get done in a cross-environment.

That's true for all binaries, but gcc/asm/binutils (overly simplified,
not thinking of 64/32 bits or endianess). But what would you do?
Provide all possible binaries for the host's architecture, too?

The rpm scriplets are run in the chroot environment, speak in the
target architecture's environment. Sneaking in host binaries for the
scriplets to succeed in a target compatible way will be quite a major
task.

But for most packages having the couple of binaries running in the
target env., but built for the host architecture, will get you
going. But at the end of the day you'll find setting up on a native
machine will be easier, and probably it will happen at the end of the
day instead of at the end of the year :)

> Of course, doing it for text/XML based databases is much easier than
> for binary ones, but even there proper handling of word-size and
> endianness should not be too hard.
> The part which I think is more difficult is running an arbitrary
> binary whose result depends on some hardware-specific /dev, /sys or
> /proc entry being accessed (not only being present).
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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