Dependencies should have an option to match the architecture of the package.

[jedieaston]

Description of the new feature / enhancement

I just noticed a bug on the community repo (microsoft/winget-pkgs#33583) where the user can't install EarTrumpet due to missing dependencies. After a little digging, I found that they are missing the x86 VCLibs (they of course have the x64 VCLibs because winget requires those).

The way dependencies find their installer entry is the same way that any manifest does, via GetPreferredInstaller, which returns a installer entry that matches the system's architecture. In 90% of cases that's what we want, however, there are some cases (a lot of times with redists) where we want a specific architecture for the dependency. In the current case, EarTrumpet would require the VCLibs, then winget would install the x64 version, not the x86 version that satisfies the dependency.

I am aware that some contributors have worked around this by adding different PackageIdentifiers for different architectures, although I think (maybe not) we all figured that was a workaround until #906 was completed.

There should be a way to specify the architecture (and scope, maybe?) of a dependency so that we can get this right.

Proposed technical implementation details

Some new schema entries, I suppose. We could just force all packages to ask for dependencies that match their own architecture, although in many cases that is not desired behavior (if it's a x86 package that can use x64 Java somehow, I want x64 Java).

[jedieaston]

@denelon Can this be added to the 1.2 schema issue? #1891

[vedantmgoyal9]

I already suggested him at https://gitter.im/Microsoft/winget-pkgs but he didn't check after posting his message.