[Arm-netbook] GK802 for $70

[Philip Hands]

"luke.leighton" <luke.leighton at gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 10:14 PM, Philip Hands <phil at hands.com> wrote:
>> "luke.leighton" <luke.leighton at gmail.com> writes:
>> ...
>>>   at this point i think it would be sensible to move this discussion
>>> to an appropriate debian mailing list, because they will know the
>>> details as to why dpkg is the way that it is.
>>
>> Please don't -- judging from the discussion so far I seriously doubt
>> anyone will be made happier by doing that.
>
>  *lol*.  yehh.... there is that.
>
>> As for levels of complexity, you missed another explosion of
>> combinations that dpkg now handles: multiarch now lets you install
>> packages from other architectures, and have packages depend/conflict
>> on/with packages from other architectures.
>
>  hurhur.  hilarious.  so i can mix amd64 packages with i386 ones yet
> have them run seamlessly because as part of the dependency chain the
> 64-to-32-bit mapping-libraries (which end up i think it is in /lib32
> or somewhere) will *also* get installed.

You don't need those any more -- under multi-arch you just install the
normal i386 libs in parallel -- libraries drop into /{,usr}/lib/$ARCH,
so on my AMD64 system I have:

  /lib/i386-linux-gnu/
  /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/
  /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/
  /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/

> or i can install armel
> packages on armhf systems and they'll actually work, just through
> nothing more than doing an an "apt-get install".

AFAIK you can even install arm stuff on your amd64, and run them with
qemu, which can be useful for cross-compiling among other things.

>  would that be about right?
>
>> opkg is all very well, and handles what's needed on openwrt very well,
>> but that's because it's possible to download the pakcages list in a
>> couple of seconds, and because people upgrade by reflashing the bulk of
>> the OS and then only use opkg to twiddle a few packages on top of that.
>
>  ... and you've done quite a few installs of openwrt if i recall
> correctly, you told me i think it was about 4 or probably more years
> ago that you'd bought netgear or linksys routers and had been having
> fun putting IPv6 on them.
>
>> If you're doing full system upgrades, with local file diversions, and
>> handling conflicts between conffile edits by the packager vs. edits by
>> the local sysadmin, then you're going to need just a little more code.
>
>  i'd forgotten about that lot.  actually, phil, you're probably about
> the best person to address this: not one of the developers themselves
> [so wouldn't get annoyed at having their time wasted] but having
> what.... something like 17 or 18 years experience with debian you'd
> kinda know all the ins-and-outs like the dpkg-divert stuff.
>
>  so in essence what you're saying is that opkg and other "simple"
> package managers are basically completely ill-equipped to deal with
> the complexities of upgrading a complete OS (as modified and
> configured to the user's choices) from one version to the next, and
> that the only choice available for such users of opkg and "simple"
> package managers is a complete and total system reinstall.
>
>  ... which is typically fine for them because the total amount of
> software installed is usually something like 4mbytes.

Removing packages and getting back to the pre-installation state is not
something that is generally much of a concern either with these things.
If you want to do that it's often easier to drop the contents of the
overlay filesystem and then reinstall the packages you actually wanted.

Debian on the other hand goes to some lengths to make sure that sort of
thing works:

  http://piuparts.debian.org/wheezy/

Also, if I find myself installing the same package with opkg often
enough, I just rebuild OpenWRT including that package in the image.  I'd
imagine that mostly avoids bumping into limitations there might be with
opkg.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]    http://www.hands.com/
|-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.                    http://www.uk.debian.org/
|(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND
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