* John Goerzen (jgoerzen@complete.org) wrote: > On Thu, Feb 05, 2004 at 05:02:53PM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote: > > No, you would have to throw it away to change to a mixed mode. The > > problem is getting the 64bit stuff out of the way of the 32 bit stuff > > and not compiling for 64 bit. > > Why would you have to throw it away? If the only problem really is the > /lib64 thing, that's not hard to fix. Because of changes to the packaging system that would be done to support the mixed environment. Basically the expectation is that you'd have to reinstall to move to the mixed system, which means that if all you care about is the result then the 64bit-only path doesn't help because it's not directly on the path to the mixed system. > So we put everything in /lib64 now, and add on /lib later. The problem is that those amd64 debs that are build will almost certainly have to be rebuilt after the decisions are made about how the packageing system is going to handle them. Let's take a concrete example: zlib. Compile it for 64bit amd64 and you get zlib, with the libraries installed into /lib64 (under your example). Now, if you want to support installing both the 32bit zlib and the 64bit zlib you've got a problem, they have the same name and dpkg won't allow it. One suggestion was to add another field for ABI which would allow you to install packages with the same name, lots of bitching ensued about breaking this somewhat cardinal rule. Of course, one of the two packages would need to have the ABI added anyway, so if that's done you'd have to recompile/reinstall the amd64 zlib. The other suggestion was to change the name of the 64bit amd64 libraries to have a 64 in them, ie: zlib -> zlib64. This creates all kinds of fun problems with the Depends rules and conflicts and whatnot. That's why you're likely to have to rebuild everything for amd64 after the changes to the packaging system are made which is why some people don't see much point in a 64bit-only native Debian system now. Personally, I think the multiarch stuff is going to take quite a while longer to be finished and I think it'd be useful to have something for people to use until then that's 64bit, but I'm in the minority on this. > > Solving the problem just for amd64 by ignoring the 32bit support would > > be a hell of a lot easier but work wasted when multiarch replaces it. > > I still don't buy that. If the problem really is the location of libs, > that is not a tough nut to crack for a single arch. It's supporting installing i386 debs (unchanged) onto an amd64 system, etc, etc. Stephen
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