Hi all, picking up that thread again, so that i won't be forgotten before some tracker patch is submitted....
After going thru all of the disparate proposals, I think that the simplest is best: why not just one extension for all platforms? This is how programs like Photoshop do it, for example. As for the fat library, that is an interesting idea, but that could be done with named directories as well. And since this would be a rare case, it seems that making the common cases simpler would be preferred.
Almost all packages which are compiled for distribution are done on on the processor/platform that they are targeted for. So its relatively straightforward to package the compiled files separately for each platform. This is how its currently done with Pd and Pd-extended, for example
ok, from the point of current practice that's ok as well.... it's much better than the current situation. What could the unified extension be? .pdext? (i don't like underscores in extensions, i have to admit) Later, there would still be the possibility to introduce something like .i686-linux.pdext as a specialization that has precedence before .pdext (if one doesn't care about . in externals' names)
best greetings, Thomas