Ticket #931 (closed defect: fixed)

Opened 13 years ago

Last modified 8 years ago

Try and reduce dependence on ia32-libs

Reported by: geofft Owned by: geofft
Priority: blocker Milestone: Current Semester
Component: -- Keywords:
Cc: Fixed in version: debathena-athena-libraries 1.5
Upstream bug:

Description

Evan tells me that

  • ia32-libs is going away in Oneiric in favor of multiarch
  • the multiarch spec does not allow dependencies on packages from a non-native architecture -- you have to manually install said packages in a separate invocation.

This combines to mean that it's impossible to write a metapackage that depends on the libraries we've been wanting to run things out of AFS -- e.g., debathena-athena-libraries can't depend on 64-bit and 32-bit libraries on amd64. At best we can write an arch-dependent metapackage debathena-athena-lib32raries, but none of our other metapackages can depend on that; it'll have to be installed manually.

The right place to figure out what we need to do about this, and possibly what upstream needs to do about this, is  #multiarch on OFTC. I'm milestoning this as a Natty Beta blocker because we need to deal really really quickly before Oneiric's multiarch plans are too immutable, even though it doesn't affect the Natty cluster release directly.

References:
 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MultiarchSpec

Pre-multiarch, architecture-dependent packages may depend on Architecture: all packages and assume that the transitive dependencies will be resolved using packages of the same architecture or other packages that are Architecture: all. To avoid breaking this assumption, Architecture: all packages will, at least initially, be treated as equivalent to packages of the native architecture for all dependency resolution. This means that for an Architecture: all package to satisfy the dependencies of a foreign-architecture package, it must be marked Multi-Arch: foreign or Multi-Arch: allowed.

 http://summit.ubuntu.com/uds-o/meeting/foundations-o-multiarch-next-steps/

Oneiric goals:

  • ia32-libs out of the archive (i.e. multiarch-ify everything in ia32-libs - at least 200 libraries)
  • Get rid of lib{32,64}foo

 http://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch

Change History

comment:1 Changed 13 years ago by geofft

Zephyr discussion indicates that it's possible that creating an Architecture: i386 metapackage called debathena-athena-libraries-i386 that does nothing other than depend on debathena-athena-libraries, and adding "debathena-athena-libraries-i386:any [amd64]" to debathena-athena-libraries' Depends field, is likely to end up with amd64 systems getting both debathena-athena-libraries:i386 and debathena-athena-libraries:amd64, and thus both i386 and amd64 versions of those libraries.

comment:2 Changed 13 years ago by jdreed

So based on this zephyr discussion, do we still need to panic? Manual installation is not hard, it's one line in the installer.

comment:3 Changed 13 years ago by jdreed

  • Owner set to geofft
  • Status changed from new to assigned

comment:4 Changed 12 years ago by geofft

  • Summary changed from Panic about lack of ia32-libs in Oneiric to Worry about change to ia32-libs in Precise

ia32-libs is back in Oneiric and should be fine (although it's worth checking one last time). Precise is  intending to replace it with a transitional package to ia32-libs-multiarch.

comment:5 Changed 12 years ago by jdreed

I'm still not sure what the action item is out of this. "apt-get install ia32-libs-multiarch" works fine on Precise, as does "aptitude install ia32-libs-multiarch". It seems that when debathena-thirdparty-libraries is installed, the ia32-libs recommendation is either not satisfiable or is ignored. I _think_ I blame thirdparty here for making a mess of the dependency resolver.

comment:6 Changed 12 years ago by jdreed

  • Milestone changed from Precise Beta to Quantum Quetzalcoatl

I don't think any action is necessary for Precise. I think it will be on quantal, but for now, the various lib32 dependencies in debathena-athena-libraries are still satisfiable on Precise.

comment:7 Changed 12 years ago by jdreed

So, one of the original issues was that ia32-libs does not get installed in Precise. The reason for this is simple: nothing in athena-libraries depends or recommends it. It's unclear _why_ this is the case, though I think I blame the awesome logic in the rules file.

One of the goals of debathena-athena-libraries was to provide as much stuff as needed to run locker software. At this point, I think this should be a statically maintained list, and we should focus on reducing it as much as possible, because it's not 2009 anymore.

That having been said, I do not think "the multiarch spec does not allow dependencies on packages from a non-native architecture -- you have to manually install said packages in a separate invocation" is 100% correct; it seems to conflict with the idea of a package being marked "Multi-arch: foreign", which ia32-libs-multiarch is.

At this point, until we actually figure out what we want, it's probably easy to simply add ia32-libs-multiarch to the installer, and decide that if you're too paranoid to run the installer, you get to figure out locker software dependencies by hand.

Last edited 12 years ago by jdreed (previous) (diff)

comment:8 Changed 12 years ago by jdreed

debathena / trac-#931 / andersk  20:32  (Anders Kaseorg)                     
       > Right, so why can't we just Depend: ia32-libs | ia32-libs-multiarch    
       > and be done?                                                           
                                                                                
       We can even just depend ia32-libs and be done.  

debathena / trac-#931 / andersk  20:34  (Anders Kaseorg)                     
       The reason debathena-athena-libraries lost its ia32-libs dependency      
       is just that ia32-libs no longer provides a .shlibs file.    

comment:9 Changed 12 years ago by jdreed

  • Priority changed from blocker to normal
  • Summary changed from Worry about change to ia32-libs in Precise to Try and reduce dependence on ia32-libs
  • Milestone changed from Quantum Quetzalcoatl to The Distant Future

We can and will Recommend: ia32-libs in debathena-athena-libraries for the near future. We should still strive to identify and depend manually (possibly with debathena-athena-lib32raries:i386 or something) what we actually care about instead of installing the world.

comment:10 Changed 11 years ago by jdreed

We, uh, should move forward on this. I suspect this involves setting up a VM without ia32-libs, and seeing what is listed in WRW that breaks.

comment:11 Changed 11 years ago by geofft

The ia32-libs in Jessie is only installable if you do a dpkg --add-architecture i386, precisely because (afaict) they're doing the same sort of trick to jump architectures as discussed on this ticket. Ubuntu automatically does that (in dpkg's postinst), and I think is planning to maintain the delta to do that indefinitely. (Also, it looks like Ubuntu is naming the i386-only arch-jumping package ia32-libs-multiarch, and Debian is naming it ia32-libs-i386.)

We might possibly want the Debathena installer to add the i386 foreign arch on Debian systems, and the manual install instructions to mention it.

comment:12 Changed 10 years ago by jdreed

  • Priority changed from normal to blocker
  • Milestone changed from The Distant Future to Current Semester

OK, ia32-libs-multiarch is now gone in Trusty. We need to deal with this. A lot of i386 libraries are pulled in via our normal dependencies, but we're missing some of them. The easiest way to fix this is probably:

Package: debathena-ia32-libs
Architecture: i386
Depends: whatever
Multi-Arch: foreign

And then have athena-libraries or something depend on debathena-ia32-libs.

comment:13 Changed 10 years ago by jdreed

  • Status changed from assigned to review

comment:14 Changed 10 years ago by jdreed

  • Status changed from review to development

comment:15 Changed 10 years ago by jdreed

This mostly works, with the caveat that on do-release-upgrade from precise to trusty, ia32-libs will remain installed on Trusty, and will thus satisfy the disjunction in athena-libraries. Once Precise goes into maintenance mode, we can simply stop building for it, and unconditionally Recommend our -ia32 package. I think Precise's multiarch support is still broken enough that we can't just stop using ia32-libs on Precise.

comment:16 Changed 8 years ago by andersk

  • Status changed from development to proposed
  • Fixed in version set to debathena-athena-libraries 1.5

comment:17 Changed 8 years ago by andersk

  • Status changed from proposed to closed
  • Resolution set to fixed
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