Re: Misleading directory names

[Antonio Huete Jimenez <ahuete.devel@xxxxxxxxx>]

Justin,

How would anyone be using amd64 directory for 2.0 if we didn't have it
back then?

Anyways this is not a big issue in my opinion. amd64 is a directory
and x86_64 a symbolic link to it. It only contains packages for 2.6
and 2.7 and by those releases our 64-bit arch. name is x86_64 so I see
no point in having both amd64 and x86_64. I would say wipe out x86_64
symbolic link and rename amd64 directory to x86_64 just for
consistency.

People navigating with a browser the package hierachy is not as
unusual as we might think. For example, when you are looking for a
specific package to know its URL so pkg_add works properly fetching
all the other dependencies, or when you're looking for the URL to set
on pkgin's configuration file.

Cheers,
Antonio Huete

> I appreciate what you're saying about having things be clear to users, but
> this is the alternative to something that would be more confusing.
> 'amd64' was hardcoded into a number of package tools, including early
> versions of pkg_radd.  The choice is either leave it untidy with a note
> about the reason for the directory, or break functionality for older
> machines.
>
> Someone was still running a number of 2.0 machines in an environment that
> couldn't be easily upgraded, last I asked about this, so untidy is a
> better choice, in this case.
>
> The long-term answer that I would prefer is to not have people need to
> navigate a package hierarchy at all, and instead have the appropriate
> software selected automatically.  We're closer to that with the pkg_radd
>