Tres Melton posted <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, excerpted
below,  on Tue, 27 Sep 2005 00:44:46 -0600:

> On Mon, 2005-09-26 at 22:22 -0400, Richard Freeman wrote:
> 
>> Is it illegal to install 32-bit in /usr/lib?  I thought that */lib/* was
>> 32-bit, and */lib64/* was 64-bit.  In any case, compliance wasn't my
>> biggest goal since the whole thing is a kludge...
> 
> That used to be the case.  It is changing so that /usr/lib points to the
> default bitness of the host.  So /usr/lib has 64bit
> libraries, /usr/lib64 is a pointer to /usr/lib and /usr/lib32 is where
> the 32 bit stuff should go.

Unless there was a Gentoo policy change I somehow missed, you have it
reversed.  Gentoo /used/ to have regular lib as the default 64-bit
location, on amd64, matching ia64 (which doesn't do 32-bit in hardware so
it only has one native hardware bitness, 64-bit, while amd64 is true dual
bitness hardware).

However, the LSB/FHS standardized on a 32-bit regular lib, and Gentoo
amd64 has been slowly headed in that direction for about a year, now.  So,
unless they reversed course and I missed it...

Currently, lib is still a symlink to lib64.  However, there's the
no-symlinks subprofile (entirely experimental and unsupported as of
2005.0, I've been busy and haven't switched to the 2005.1 profile so don't
know what the status is there), which would make lib64 the standard 64-bit
location without the help of the lib -> lib64 symlink.  lib32 remains the
32-bit location, however, in all cases.

Thus, with normal profiles, lib should be symlinked to lib64 (tho some
apparently still have the symlink reversed, lib64 symlinking to lib, the
old way), and 32-bit libs getting put there /could/ be problematic, if
care isn't taken to keep them separate.  (That's actually the biggest
reason, AFAIK, that the LSB/FHS standard left lib as legacy 32-bit -- they
decided most things would need a bit of effort to port to 64-bit anyway,
so they might as well standardize on lib64 and do that as part of the
porting, and leave unported legacy stuff to use lib, rather than having to
mess with BOTH 32-bit and 64-bit stuff.)  Of course, just how problematic
it actually is depends on whether you have 64-bit and 32-bit libs both
trying to install to the same name  in /lib, or if your installation
doesn't happen to have duplicate libs in both bitnesses.

So... currently, due to Gentoo going one way originally while the standard
ended up going the other, if you are using the normal Gentoo layout, it
will indeed create issues putting 32-bit libs in lib.  However, once the
transfer is complete, some years down the road, or if your system is using
LSB/FHS standards, 32-bit in lib will be fine, just as it was on x86. 
Again, that is... unless there was a policy reversal I somehow missed, and
Gentoo is going back to 64-bit native lib.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


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