Re: Multiarch, policy and cross-compiler libraries for non-Debian architectures

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi,

Adam Borowski wrote:

> Such dirs cannot include the compiler's name, since there are multiple
> compilers for the architecture.  Binaries compiled with
> i586-mingw32msvc-gcc, i686-w64-mingw32-gcc and MSVC share the same ABI.
>
> Even specific models of CPUs are no good: on i386, gcc -dumpmachine returns
> i486-linux-gnu yet the arch triplet is i386-linux-gnu.

IIUC then the GNU triplet includes the choice of C library because
binaries (e.g., libraries) compiled against mingw32 and mingw-w64
cannot be linked (i.e., they do not share ABI).  Though I could easily
be wrong.

IIRC according to the multiarch spec, paths in Debian use "simplified"
triplets (DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH) with i[3456...]86 replaced by i386.
Including so much unnecessary detail about the default instruction set
in the triplet is unusual (I know of no example other than x86).  As
you mention, in the ix86 case it causes problems so we work around it.

Hope that helps,
Jonathan