Stupid idea for biarch support

[Tony Lindgren <tony@atomide.com>]

Hi all,

Sorry, if this has been already discussed... I've been poking through the
archives somewhat and could not find it. If this is a stupid idea, then just
shoot it down right now :)

What if we do the following:

1. Do a native 64-bit debian where everything goes to /lib64

2. Have two separate apt databases, one for 64-bit and one for 32-bit

3. Have some script to diff the two databases to see which packages are
   installed as 32-bit, and which ones are 64-bit.

Basically the 32-bit apps would go where they normally go. For example,
apt-get foo would install /usr/bin/foo with 32-bit libs in /lib and 
/usr/lib.

Then running the 64-bit environment apt-get install foo would overwrite 
/usr/bin/foo with the 64-bit version with libs in /lib64 and /usr/lib64.

Or the apt-get could be 64-bit by default, and then by running 
linux32 apt-get install foo would install the 32-bit version.

No changes to dpkg needed to support biarch? Goswin, any problems with 
this approach?

I'm Using Gentoo for now, BTW :) Don't know if I want to be constantly
recompiling though.

Cheers,

Tony