On Tue, Feb 02, 2016 at 06:46:52PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: > On Tue, Feb 02, 2016 at 11:55:19PM +0100, Johannes Schauer wrote: > > Why would we want to not always permit binary packages to depend on > > packages of foreign architectures if these architectures are also release > > architectures and the binary packages are installable together with > > packages from the native architecture? > > Because allowing arbitrary packages to have cross-dependencies has the > potential to negatively impact the installability of packages on a system > that has not been configured for multiarch. We want to allow > cross-dependencies for certain use cases not well served by the current > infrastructure (e.g., cross-compilers). We don't want packages to > inadvertently introduce cross-dependencies that break the > same-arch-bootstrappability of the archive, or that cause all our users to > have to download 2x as many Packages files to make full use of their > systems.
In that case, perhaps what you want is a hand-managed list of packages that are allowed to have cross-arch dependencies. If you also skip real checks, this would be trivial to implement. This way, britney's logic would remain purely single-arch. -- A tit a day keeps the vet away.
