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Re: Get rid of the lib64 dir?



On 04-May-11 01:11, Tollef Fog Heen wrote:
> Andreas Jochens wrote:
> >We could make /lib64 a symlink to /lib/x86_64-linux, but what about 
> >/lib/i386-linux? A kind of circular symlink from /lib to /lib/i386-linux?
> >The same would apply for the /usr/lib64 and /usr/lib paths.
> >
> >This seems to be a general weakness of the current multiarch proposals.
> 
> Uhm, why?  Libraries directly in /lib and /usr/lib are legacy libraries. 
>  There's nothing wrong with those, except they won't work well with 
> multiarch libraries.

I do not have enough experience and knowledge to really see all 
the consequences of these file system related decisions - neither for 
the Debian package system nor for linux users in general.

My idea was simply that it should be easy to set up symlinks from the 
old standard locations like /lib and /usr/lib to the new architecture 
specific ones. It should also be possible to simply change those 
symlinks to point to a different default architecture, e.g. to change
/lib -> /i386-linux/lib to /lib -> /x86_64-linux/lib.

Another point is that one should not have more architecture specific 
entry points in the file system than necessary. The current multiarch 
proposal has

/lib/i386-linux
/usr/lib/i386-linux
/usr/local/i386-linux
...

and maybe even

/bin/i386-linux
/usr/bin/i386-linux
/usr/local/bin/i386-linux
...

at a later stage.

To have one single architecture specific entry point like /i386-linux 
(or maybe /arch/i386-linux) with a complete hierarchy below it
looks like a cleaner solution to me. 

It should also be much easier to support this by package tools.
All architecture dependend files could simply be installed in the 
architecture specific hierarchy. The symlinks from the old 
standard locations would then make the files for the default 
architecture available at the standard paths.

Regards
Andreas Jochens



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