[F8/multilib] {,/usr}/{,s}bin64 (was: Split libperl from perl)

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Thu, 2007-04-26 at 22:02 +0200, Christian Iseli wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 11:52:03 -0400, Ed Hill wrote:
> > I would like to see Fedora adopt the {,/usr}/{,s}bin64 handling as
> > described by Axel.  Or something very similar to it.
> > 
> > If it is possible (and I think it is), I'd like to have a framework 
> > that allows *full* co-existence of 32-bit and 64-bit packages.
> 
> I'm pretty lost here...  Why would anyone want a multiarch system ?
/me thinks people are mixing up two different objectives of multiarched
systems, here:

Traditionally there are two fundamentally different approaches to
multiarched systems:

1. Using one base architecture but have "secondary architectures" for
"backward compatible" applications. 

Most common case is: "Running 32bit-apps on 64bit systems"


2. Seamlessly booting a system into different architectures without
reinstallation/reconfiguration.

An example would be alternatively booting a system with 64bit support on
HW into "32bit" or "64bit" mode without changing the installation.

> I understand multilib a bit better. It can be useful when a
> particular tool (e.g. firefox and its plugins) work better on one arch
> than on the other one.
Wrt. firefox probably is a case of 1. above.

> we already have chroots and virtual machines, so what more does it
> buy us to get a big mess of duplicated things?
multilibs (in GCC's terms) provide a very efficient way to natively
cross compile (i.e. use native tools to compile for a non-native
architecture). In a perfect world, normal users would never need any of
the "secondary arch'ed" packages, only developers would have to install
the "secondary arch'ed" *-devel packages.

Ralf