Re: libc6

[Yaroslav Halchenko <debian@onerussian.com>]

On Wed, Nov 05, 2003 at 09:42:21AM -0700, Mike Snitzer wrote:
> This is a naive question, having not looked at the current debian bi-arch
> framework, but shouldn't i386 and amd64 packages be able to coexist?  The
> amd64 support should ideally install all its binaries and libraries into
> something like /usr/lib64/{bin,lib}
I'm newbie as well but will try to answer your question considering
reading original draft of proposal from bart's website and having piece
in mind how it should be done.

Why would you want to keep 32bit app (/usr/bin/*) if you have 64bit
compiled version of it? right - you don't want to keep it. So /usr/bin/*
will have both 32bit and 64bit apps but from different packages so with
no overlap no names. If you decide to create /usr/bin and /usr/bin64
then you're doomed to struggle cause you would need to specify which
architecture to use in each script, so you will need to redefine PATH in
each case etc.

Libraries is a bit more tricky. Because ldconfig now can resolve between
different architectures we can easily put the same library in 32bit
version in /usr/lib and in 64bit into /usr/lib64. Then packages compiled
agains 32 bit version will use the one from /usr/lib and 64bit apps
(from the same /usr/bin) will use /usr/lib64 version.

The problem comes when the package wasn't cleanly separated into
bin/library, then it has both - /usr/bin/ and /usr/lib files. And there
problem comes. Lets take my aptitude for instance. 
Package apt (do apt -L apt) has both lib and bin files, so I can't just
take libapt and install it separately. This is where .udeb packages
should come in use right? People clearify this issue for me please....

 
> What are the longterm plans for debian i386/amd64 bi-arch support?
I want to see it running :-) Original idea was "to have complete CD
distro" :-)
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