Re: Upcoming Debian multiarch support (amd64, sparc64, s390x, mips64) [affects sarge slightly]

[Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>]

* Goswin von Brederlow (brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de) wrote:
> The reason for /lib 32 bit and /lib64 64 bit is to keep compatibility
> to i386 compiled programs. I don't know how IA64 handles its /lib32
> subdir but they probably have some magic in there that fails if
> binaries are compiled with some uncommon options (like setting rpath).

Now, now, let's not be stupid here.  The reason for /lib 32bit is to
keep compatibility with *broken* i386 binary-only programs.  The loader
can certainly handle having a /lib32, there's only a problem when there
are hard-coded paths in the binary that can't be changed (which is done
using -rpath I think, if anyone actually uses it with system paths?).

> On amd64 the only real reason for 32 bit support is compatibility with
> the old i386 stuff and binary-only stuff so breaking it even once is
> not realy acceptable to a lot of people.

You can still be compatible with i386 and have a /lib32 except in the
broken-binary case.  Personally no one has actually demonstrated such a
case to me yet, but I've heard they exist.

	Stephen

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