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

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:

> * Goswin von Brederlow (brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de) wrote:
> > Josselin Mouette <josselin.mouette@ens-lyon.org> writes:
> > > system for amd64, introducing a new arch. Then, ship a few 32-bit
> > > compatibility libraries for 32-bit proprietary software.
> > 
> > You would have to recompile every binary or add some obscure hacks to
> > get /lib32 to work on amd64.
> 
> I hardly see it as a problem when we add a new arch that we have to
> recompile all the binaries.  I'd expect it in general, actually.

The 32 bit support in amd64 is eventually just for binary only stuff.
Good luck recompiling those.

Everything else will most likely be ported to 64 bit at some stage. If
someone is willing to port something I see no reason to not include
the result in debian-amd64. Through that eventually everything of
intrest will be ported.

> > Also there are 4 (not just 3 as in the topic) othger archs that have
> > exactly the same problem:
> > 
> > sparc64, mips64, s390x, ppc64.
> 
> And ia64 which can run 32bit and 64bit code, from what I understand.  In
> general you don't want to run 32bit code though, which is pretty much
> the same boat amd64 is in.
> 
> > Multiarch support is comming so amd64 can hitch a ride as well. That
> > also means that the amd64 patches from SuSe and RH can be used along
> > with 64bit patches from sparc64, mips64, s390x, ppc64.
> 
> Let's not lump amd64 into the exact same boat as sparc64 and company.
> On amd64, 64bit is faster and so, yes, we really *should* recompile
> everything for it.  The same is not true on some of the other archs
> where 64bit is slower.
> 
> 	Stephen

The problems are the same, the extend of the probems (amount of
packages affected) is different.

MfG
        Goswin