ICU was "outsourced" this summer and the optional package was available only for x86, leading to PowerPC build not working anymore. It was really difficult to build a PowerPC build of ICU, because we have no running PowerPC system yet. So someone had to hack around the build tools to get some way of cross compiling. The more we move things away from trunk, the more problems like this may happen and prevent building for a particular platform.As for making it easier for those working on other target architectures? Maybe in the longer run it would, but first they need to get the core parts to build correctly, and if it's required that they have to also build all these extra parts that may slow them down in the shorter term wouldn't it?
It also complicates changes of compiler (more packages need to be rebuilt) for the gcc4 version.
A solution would be to allow to build the packages automatically from source as an option, and not use the binary packages. This needs more jamfile work, however.
-- Adrien.
