Re: ia32-libs{-tools}, multiarch, squeeze

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Roger Leigh <rleigh@codelibre.net> writes:
> Although I use amd64, I have yet to want to install any 32bit
> software, so I'm not entirely sure what the use case is for it.

While I agree in general, I do occasionally want a more fully functional
32-bit system infrastructure.  Typically this is when I need to compile
a program which is buggy, and has 32-bit assumptions in it, or runs
faster in 32-bit mode, or whatever.

When all the libraries the program needs are available in ia32-libs,
then gcc -m32 works great, but when they _aren't_, it can get miserable
pretty quickly.

So I love the _idea_ of a seamless automatic system for installing
arbitrary 32-bit libraries on amd64.

The current ia32-apt-get thing, seems pretty kludgey and fragile though...

[I've reverted my systems to the old versions for the time being and
have a lot of packages on hold...  hopefully after a while either things
will be a bit more solid or these changes will have been backed out.]

-Miles

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