Bug#629819: libc6: gcc-4.2 from lenny no longer works

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi Andy,

Andy Chittenden wrote:

>> 	  The toolchain in Debian has been updated to cope with that, and most
>> 	  build systems should be unaffected. If you are using a non-Debian
>> 	  toolchain to build your software and it is not able to cope with
>> 	  multiarch, you might try to pass the following options to your
>> 	  compiler:
>> 
>> 	    -I/usr/include/$arch --sysroot /usr/lib/$arch
>
> We're not using a non-Debian toolchain

I know, but did you try the workaround mentioned above?  If it works,
the wording could be adjusted (e.g., to "The toolchain in Debian wheezy
has been updated" ... "If you are using a non-Debian or an older
toolchain" ...).  If it doesn't work, it probably doesn't work with
stock gcc, either, and the text should be fixed.

[...]
> the only way I've found for sorting out the backward compatibility
> issue is to create symlinks from /lib and /usr/lib to $arch
> versions. Perhaps there should be a "compat" package for doing that
> officially.

Yes, that's sounding more and more like a good idea.  Could you send
a package description for "apt-cache show" to print for such a package
and an exact list of the symlinks that you had to create?  (Sometimes
people call this sending a proposed patch. :))

Thanks much.
Jonathan