Re: A More Radical Multi-Arch Counter-Proposal

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Bill Allombert <allomber@math.u-bordeaux.fr> writes:

> On Fri, Jan 16, 2004 at 09:55:33PM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> > Simon Richter <Simon.Richter@hogyros.de> writes:
> > 
> > > > Proposal:
> > > >  A. Develop two architecture:
> > > >     i386 : this is Debian/i386 as exist today
> > > >     amd64: this a native port of Debian to Amd64 with 64 bit binaries.
> > > >  B. On Amd64, people have the choice to install either i386 or amd64
> > > >  C. People that need both install a i386 chroot on top of amd64 or a
> > > >     amd64 chroot on top of i386.
> > > > Optional:
> > > >  D. Debian provides a front-end to debootstrap and debhelper to make
> > > >  installation and integration of chroot easier.
> > > 
> > > E. Debian provides a patched ld.so for the amd64 platform that knows how
> > > to chroot() and re-exec(), thus providing transparency. 
> > 
> > Forget it. A chroot is out of the question. Noone is going for it.
> 
> Do you imply that some design decisions will make the above arrangement
> impossible ? Or that a native amd64 port is out of the question ?
> 
> Cheers,

Every other linux is already using /lib, /lib32, /lib64 to make
multiarch binaries work. That means upstream authors get patches for
that way. Starting something new means Debian will stand alone.

A chroot is also a far worse choice to have multiarch support then the
existing and perfectly working lib64. There is just no reason to give
that up.

Think about what it means for mips, sparc, s390 and powerpc.

MfG
        Goswin