Comment 40 for bug 831768

On 13 March 2012 03:26, Daniel Hartwig <email address hidden> wrote:
>> 3. each available architecture of packages that are available only in
>> foreign architectures as "<name>:<architecture>"
>
> Ok, this may prove more useful than what I was considering (only show
> the first such architecture).
>
>> The reason for this is that the order in which
>> they are specified in the /etc/dpkg/dpkg.conf.d/multiarch is not an
>> order of preference.
>
> Dpkg does not care about the order of architectures because it only
> deals with exactly the packages it is instructed to.
>
> On the APT level a prefered order is needed.  APT::Architectures is the
> configuration item that defines this (/etc/apt/apt.conf or
> /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/*).
>
>> Dear Daniel, you said "- consider how the system in general should
>> treat multiarch packages (consider them a single, or multiple
>> packages? What are the pros and cons of each approach?)"
>>
>> Can you please elaborate on that question?
>
> Things like, should the package view be grouped by architecture?
>
> --\ Installed Packages
>  --\ armel
>    --- admin
>    ...
>  --\ powerpc
>    --- admin
>    ...
>
> Or should each package only be shown once (just the name) and
> have the different available architectures elaborated on the
> package info screen?

The problem with showing separate archs separately is there is no easy
way to list the packages then.
In the ideal case they are at least in the same section (but may not
if the section was changed and not all archs are rebuilt) but still
some might be under new, another under installed, another under
uninstalled, ..

Showing the packages for different archs should be easier than
searching all sections.

Sure, you can change the way Aptitude organizes packages but there is
no good UI for that. You have to manually type in the properties by
which the packages should be categorized.