On Thu, 2003-11-20 at 09:42, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> i'm still unclear about the purpose of the "arch" directive in the ipkg.conf
> file. clearly, it's establishing a comparative priority for different architectures,
> but for what exactly?
It is so that ipkg will only install packages built for the specified
CPU/platform given a feed containing packages for multiple CPUs (e.g.
MIPS vs ARM or sa11x0 vs pxa2x0), multiple platforms (e.g. iPAQ vs
Simpad. The priority is so that ipkg will preferentially install the
package that matches the configuration most specifically. I'm not sure
whether we are using this in any of the feeds, but it is a possibility.
If someone wanted to provide a generic ARM compiled video app and also
an xscale-tuned video app in the same feed, that would be supported
under this scheme: strongarm, arm7, arm9, etc would install the generic
arm version of the package, xscale would install the xscale version.
>
> someone on another list posted that his conf file contains
>
> arch all 1
> arch any 1
> arch noarch 1
> arch mipsel 20
>
> so as i read it, this person is clearly working with the MIPS architecture.
> so what does the above mean? that when he tries to download a package,
> this set of priorities dictates which architecture of package it looks for first,
> in case there is a choice?
The particular numbers do not matter, but separating them by 10 or 20
leaves room to sneak something else in between. Although since the
number only appears in the ipkg.conf file it is easy enough to renumber
if needed.
> and this poster also mentioned that this was what was found in his file
> /etc/ipkg/arch.conf. i was not aware that there was a possible hierarchy
> of configuration files. i hadn't seen this mentioned anywhere. can anyone
> clarify this? i'd always thought that all configuration was in a single file.
That is a fairly recent change. ipkg reads /etc/ipkg.conf and any
/etc/ipkg/*.conf.
One of the common patterns we run into is multiple contributors to
configuration files (e.g., from multiple packages or feeds). It can be
difficult to manage the merge as packages are installed and removed.
In the cases where the configuration file is widely used or a standard
interface, we've added scripts that manage the configuration file as
packages are installed or removed. Otherwise, we stick with spearate
files that have single owners. Examples of this are /etc/ipkg/*.conf,
the run scripts in /etc/rc*.d, /etc/resume-scripts,
/etc/suspend-scripts.
Jamey
Received on Thu Nov 20 15:40:16 2003
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