[bug] Install packages compatible with incorrect architecture

[LielHarel]

Environment details

• Operating System+version: all
• Compiler+version: all
• Conan version: 2.0.9 (latest)
• Python version: all

Steps to reproduce

1. Make sure settings.arch in your profile differs your host architecture, for example:
   If your host architecture is x86 and in your profile is defined:

[settings]
arch=armv7
....
[conf]
tools.system.package_manager:mode=install
tools.system.package_manager:sudo=True

2. In the conan file you should use _SystemPackageManagerTool in some way, for example:

def system_requirements(self):
        apt = Apt(self)
        apt.install(["tree"], update=True, check=True)

For installing requirements for building the conan package.

3. Then execute conan build -pr <your_profile> ....

4. If on your system the command tree is not found (in linux you can uninstall it with the command apt-get remove tree to try this), conan will try to install the package for arm and not for your host architecture (x86), means it will try to install tree:arm instead of just tree.

Logs

conan executes something like that apt-get install tree:arm on x86 architecture and we get an error that the architecture is suitable for our device.

Have you read the CONTRIBUTING guide?

• I've read the CONTRIBUTING guide

[memsharded]

Hi @LielHarel

Thanks for your report.

It is not completely clear that the "build" package is always the one to be installed. I understood that some distros allow the :arch precisely to be able to install some packages that can be used in cross-compilation scenarios, even if they don't match the current machine "build" architecture. This is the case when the system requirements are libraries to link.

On the other hand, I understand that some tools executables, intended to be run in the "build" context (the tree example), which is a different use case than the "host" cross-build scenario of the libraries.

So I think this is not exactly a bug that is solved by changing the context for all install, but I think that what we are missing here is a qualifier in the install methods that specify whether a system-require is a tool build=True for example or it is a library (maybe the default, build=False?). Based on that qualifier, the internal will decide to append the :arch host architecture or not.

If you would like to contribute such a feature, it will be very appreciated of course :) Thanks very much!

[LielHarel]

I would love to add the feature that enables the user to indicate if the installed package is a host tool or a library :)
Open a PR for this #14752 :)