Re: multiarch/bi-arch status (ETA) question
On Tue, Jul 05, 2005 at 04:46:59PM -0400, Stephen Frost wrote:
> What's the reason for having both versions of a given app installed?
> I'm pretty sure it was decided that was a bad idea and that there wasn't
> any good use case for it and so we weren't going to try and support it.
> It just doesn't make sense.
I want to play with 64bit firefox so i can develop a 64bit plugin for
it. I might at the same time want 32bit firefox so I can use plugins
that are still 32bit only.
That's just one reason.
Repeat for mplayer where some codecs are 32bit only for now, but others
might run much faster in 64bit and you want to help port it there.
> This is only an issue with libraries, and /usr/share should have things
> which are arch-independent and /usr/lib/<blah> should have
> arch-dependent things. If packages don't follow that today then they're
> broken already and need to be fixed. It is true that there can't be
> multiple things installed with files in the same place, so any
> /usr/share usage in libraries needs to be split out in a -common package
> for that library. This isn't an issue for programs because we're not
> interested in supporting the unjustified case for having the same
> program both 32bit and 64bit at the same time.
If we don't then I consider multiarch very broken.
Len Sorensen
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