Re: multiarch standard path

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi Bill,

Bill Allombert wrote:

> When multiarch was introduced, it was implied that a tool to query the
> multiarch would be standardised. However unless I missed need, no such 
> tool exist yet. This is problematic when building older version of software.
> with legacy build systems that needs to know the path to a library.

I believe "gcc -print-multiarch" is supposed to do that.

 $ gcc -m32 -print-multiarch
 i386-linux-gnu
 $ gcc -m64 -print-multiarch
 x86_64-linux-gnu

[...]
> I wonder if we could not simply add a symlink
> /usr/lib/default-abi -> /usr/lib/<multiarch-triplet>
> This way, their would be an universal path valid for older build systems
> without running any scripts.

This requires the user to somehow declare which should be the default ABI.
At that point, a symlink farm /usr/lib/*.so.* -> <triplet>/\1.so.\2
does not seem like a terrible idea, as discussed here:

  http://bugs.debian.org/648889

Though I have never needed it myself.

Hope that helps,
Jonathan