Re: pure64, multiarch etc (was: "Trivial Question" - 32bit vs. 64bit vs. 32/64bit)
On Thu, 27 May 2004, Hugo Mills wrote:
> On Thu, May 27, 2004 at 04:15:22PM +0200, Mattias Wadenstein wrote:
>
> > Well, they way I see it is that amd64 will be a debian arch and multiarch
> > never will be. The current multi-arch approach is just changes to the
> > source packages and splitting out common packages etc. The changes will
> > not just be for amd64 but for all architectures that can live under the
> > same kernel/system. That will be pretty orthogonal to the amd64 port and
> > happen during a longer time frame, starting with the base libraries.
>
> I agree. The current multiarch work has the potential to be much
> more than merely an i386/amd64 thing, and indeed is targeted as such.
> It would be (considerably?) easier to develop a system capable of
> doing the i386/amd64 split, but the main multiarch proposals
> potentially cover _all_ systems capable of running code for more than
> one architecture on the same box. There are at least three other types
> of machine that I'm aware of (Sparc64, MIPS, and IA64) that could use
> the multiarch system.
As has been pointed out in responses, most of the current arches have some
benefit of multiarch work.
> I believe that once we iron out the bugs in multiarch, it should be
> possible to migrate to a multi-arch system from either i386 _or_
> pure64, although there may be more issues involved with moving up from
> i386. (Such as identifying from a completely i386 userspace that the
> machine is amd64 and hence i386/amd64 multiarch capable. There may
> also be difficulties installing the first 64-bit kernel.)
Yes, and this isn't really a problem. It is already fairly common to run
an i386 debian install with an amd64 kernel, and it is the kernel
capabilities (uname) that determine what arches would be installable.
Either i386 or pure64 can be used as a base for multiarch, the big
difference would be the unported libs and what arch /bin/ls is likely to
be (even though you could install/upgrade to the other arch if you want).
/Mattias Wadenstein
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