On 11/15/2009 03:25 PM, Duncan wrote:
There's a couple of experimental projects whereby portage is modified to be able to handle multiple ABI installations in parallel. As a matter of practice, I don't know if they'll ever get merged, because we've gone this long without it, and as I mentioned, the worst need was along about 2006 or so, when a lot of folks had switched already but Flash and etc weren't yet available for 64-bit, and even mainstream FLOSS apps like Open Office hadn't been ported. Since pretty much everything mainstream FLOSS has been ported now, and the proprietaryware folks are coming around to 64-bit as well, there's far less need for multilib in general than there used to be, and the need/demand will be ever weaker with time.
Multilib is still very useful. 64-bit Firefox is slow as molasses currently (it uses the legacy javascript engine), and every 32-bit app that uses Qt or Gtk looks extremely ugly due to missing 32-bit Qt/Gtk styles. Wine will never be 64-bit and it needs libraries not available in emul packages.
Also, lets not forget that many people would prefer a 32-bit userland running on a 64-bit kernel.
Bottom line, multilib will be needed (and useful) for many years to come.
