[maemo-developers] FatELF Re: rpm vs. deb and "universal binaries/packages"

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 16:07, Shuduo Sang <sangshuduo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> that is what apple do in their universal binary format. it benefits for
> end-user who do not know detail what their device running on arm or x86.
> for the hacker want to reduce size, they can strip it to normal
> architecture-dependent binary too.

One thing we learnt in the Maemo community many years ago - and are
still trying to get across occasionally - is that "installing random
software from a .deb (or .rpm) file" isn't a good way to build a
cohesive and reliable platform.

FatELF or some new extensions to an existing packaging format would be
wonderful if having users install random binaries from random
locations on the Internet was a useful requirement. What's the use
case? Why can't said user get content from an architecture aware
repository/app store?

Cheers,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/