[Mageia-dev] Dutch tax program dependencies

[Guillaume Rousse]

Le 06/03/2013 00:50, Reinout van Schouwen a écrit :
> Hi all,
>
> The Dutch tax service makes life difficult for (64-bit) Mageia users
> because the tax filing program expects the i586 versions of libxext6 and
> libsm6 to be around.
>
> The tax service claim on their web site that Ubuntu 12.x and Linux Mint
> 13 are supported. Could it be that they have these libraries
> preinstalled on 64 bit platforms?
>
> Would it be possible to provide some kind of stub package that downloads
> the program with the required dependencies, like Arch does? (
> https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/belastingdienst-ib2012/ )
Most binary-only i586 programs expects additional 32 bits libraires 
dependencies: skype, for instance. On a pure 64 bits systems, these 
libraries won't be installed, and they won't even be available directly, 
as long as 32 bits additional package sources are not configured...

I'm effraid than endlessly adding 32bits dependencies on our 64 bits 
packages, such as we did with pulseaudio for skype case, or adding 
'stub' packages here, won't scale indefinitly to match every piece of 
softwares we can't distribute ourselves. First, they are exceptions to 
our 'self-containment' package sources policy... Second, dependencies 
won't adress the package source configuration issue.

So, what about adressing end users intelligence, and document all those 
issues on a central 'compatibility' page on our wiki, instead of relying 
on such kind of hacks ?

-- 
BOFH excuse #155:

Dumb terminal