* Santiago Vila (sanvila@unex.es) wrote: > On Wed, 14 Jul 2004, Stephen Frost wrote: > > * Santiago Vila (sanvila@unex.es) wrote: > > > I have received the following bug report. Would you please be so kind > > > to provide some rationale for it? Specifically: > > > > Sure. > > > > > What are these symlinks for? > > > > AMD64 LSB support, in large part. > > Isn't this what the "lsb" package is for? Well, except that they *have* to be there if the linker is there... > > > Exactly what software or package uses them? > > > > All packages use the /lib64 -> /lib symlink because the linker location > > is required by LSB to be /lib64/ld-(somethingorother). > > That alone would only make /lib64 required, but not /usr/lib64 or > /usr/X11R6/lib64. True, the others are less important I think, and more for LSB compliance. > For /lib64, why don't you just put the dynamic linker in /lib64? > > How the requirement that the dynamic linker is at /lib64 becomes > a requirement that /lib and /lib64 are the same? > > Perhaps are libraries required to be in /lib64 as well, not just the > dynamic linker? In such case, however, what is this lib64 thing good for? Right, the libraries are supposted to be in /lib64 as well for LSB compliance. Moving where lots of Debian packages install their libraries would take a fair bit of effort though, and there's a better solution that we'll be doing instead when we get there. > Is it a way to allow coexistence of 32-bit and 64-bit libraries in the > same system? If so, would a symlink lib64 -> lib not destroy completely > the ability to have both kind of libraries in the system, because > of namespace problems? The original intent of lib/ and lib64/ was to allow coexistence, yes. Debian's packaging system, and Debian packages in general don't support this though so we've decided to not support the 32bit side of things on AMD64 and go purely 64bit (at least until multiarch). We still want to be LSB compliant such that AMD64 binaries built for LSB will work on Debian's AMD64, and Debian AMD64 binaries will run on LSB AMD64 systems. With the approach we're using, we should be reasonably close to that, but that's what we need the symlinks for. Again, the usr/X11R6/lib64 and usr/lib64 could be in the 'lsb' package, I think, but, well, personally it seems more appropriate in base-files to me, esp. since the /lib64 symlink must be there. > Still confused. Hope this helps to clear it up. If you have any other questions please feel free to ask. Stephen
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