dpkg-cross knows which architectures are big endian or little endian, but only indirectly via the cross-config.$arch files which it installs to support autotools. The TDeb proposal needs a way of determining the value to pass to the (undocumented) 'msgfmt --endianness {biglittle}' option. {bug filed} I have one eye on em_installtdeb becoming a part of debhelper in the long term so it does not currently depend on any cross support code. The whole idea of crossbuilding TDebs has implications for translator uploads too - translators can't be expected to upload packages for other architectures - so some form of autobuild support will be needed from whatever debhelper component does the work and each Emdebian repository would need it's own locale-arch branch. Options: 1. Parse /etc/dpkg-cross/cross-config.arm in em_installtdeb - when dpkg-cross finally merges into dpkg, the location can be updated. This will probably add another perl module dependency but not much else. Seems a bit of a hack though. 2. Implement 'dpkg-cross -a $ARCH --get-endian' that simply outputs big or little to STDOUT. This could involve some duplication within dpkg-cross and we would have to ensure that this option also gets merged into dpkg. This option is a little limited in case we need other output for other purposes later, requiring an option for each one. 3. A separate table in em_installtdeb - my least favourite option because of the obvious duplication. endianness is probably a speed issue rather than a "will not work" issue. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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