Re: lib64 in fedora glibc

Andreas Jaeger
2004-06-04T05:08:18Z

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David Mosberger <davidm@napali.hpl.hp.com> writes:

>>>>>> On Tue, 01 Jun 2004 11:48:56 +0200, Andreas Jaeger <aj@suse.de> said:
>
> Andreas> Just a clarification: AMD64 [1] has most of user space
> Andreas> 64-bit. Only a few applications are 32-bit - but this
> Andreas> lib/lib64 is the best way to handle 32-bit packages (no
> Andreas> need to change files).
>
> >> Moving to lib32 and lib64 makes sense in that environment.
>
> Andreas> Not lib32, just lib.
>
> That may be a reasonable solution for x86-64 but I don't think it is
> for ia64. What's needed is multi-architecture support, not bi-arch
> support. Let's consider some possible bi-arch setups:
>
> contents of:
>
> host arch: /usr/lib /usr/lib64
> ----------
> x86-64 x86 x86-64
> ia64 x86 ia64
> ppc64 ppc32 ppc64
>
> So far, so good. But what if x86-64 emulation support were added to
> Intel's IA32EL? With the bi-arch-logic, that's either not supported
> or you'd have to move the ia64-stuff _again_ from /usr/lib64 into some
> other place. Thanks, but no thanks. Not to mention that trying to
> move ia64 libraries from /usr/lib to /usr/lib64 is almost certainly
> worse than any ill it could possibly cure.
>
> Even if you didn't in the above scenario, it wouldn't surprise me if
> the ppc64 folks also wanted to be able to run x86 binaries. If so,
> the bi-arch approach won't work for them either, because /usr/lib is
> already taken by ppc32.

We're speaking here about native code - and not emulations. So, for
ia64 I only see two native codes right now: 64-bit code as it is and
code using 32-bit pointers (don't know how it's called).

And x86 on ppc64 would be an emulation - not the native code - and
would end somewhere else.

Note that what your table says about ppc64 and x86-64 above is correct
- and you can add s390, mips and sparc64 under the same line. Sparc has
done this for a long time already.

For details see the FHS. The big advantage on x86-64 [1] with lib and
lib64 is that you can use existing 32-bit x86 rpms and install them -
and they work without changes.

I don't know what Red Hat is doing with x86 and with lib64 - and you
really should ask them for clarification.

Andreas

Footnotes:
[1] Note I'm more concerned with x86-64, I'm not advocating here
anything for ia64.

--
Andreas Jaeger, aj@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/~aj
SUSE Linux AG, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

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