[...]
Well, gee, that sounds like foo --version is just for you.
How about an extension to rpm so that it can hold several
architectures in the same package and extract the right one?
That sounds like a good idea.
I was once of the opinion that FAT binaries are a good idea. In practice
though, I'm not sure I've ever had more than a couple of occasions per year
to use them. Even on the Mac they don't seem to be worth the hassle. Many
vendor ship 68k and PPC version separately.
If it was widely adopted, and vendors started using it - then things like
Netscape might jump from 10MB to 30MB. With software distribution moving
more and more online, I don't see why bloating already oversized files is a
good thing.
I think if anyone really needs fat binaries, then something similar to what
Ted mentioned was to have a directory 'be the application' and put all the
crufty bits in there - and then let some userspace desktop manager or
something deal with it.
'Pretty Things'[0] like KDE and GNOME should be able to be easily extended to
handle this. And as an added bonus you get the ability to store other
resource in the application. Kewl.
-Chris
[0] As opposed to 'Real Man's[1]' tools like bash.
[1] Yes, I said MAN. MAN MAN MAN. Sue me.