Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Re: Re: file type not allowed in /usr/lib

[Simon Stelling <blubb@gentoo.org>]

Duncan wrote:
> As an aside, I'd often wondered at the implications of having a
> "multibin", similar to "multilib", and why, with all the work going into
> multilib, nobody seemed to be doing anything with multibin.  I had
> wondered why having a 64-bit mplayer for most stuff, and a 32-bit mplayer,
> for 32-bit-only binary-only codecs, wasn't as reasonable a solution as
> it seemed to be for libraries.  Your comments just touch on that, but
> it's the first time I've seen /any/ sort of comments on the subject, from
> anyone who'd be in a position to know the issues involved, from any of the
> distributions.

Well, the problem is, even if you have two different directories for 
each bitness, the binaries will still collide, because of $PATH: How do 
you decide whether you want the 32bit or 64bit player? There's no real 
solution other than having suffixes like e.g. mplayer32 and mplayer64. 
You could reset PATH each time you launch a binary of other bitness, but 
that's just an ugly workaround and it may not always do what you want. 
So you have to use suffixes. But then, you don't need two directories, 
as the binaries won't collide anymore... Additionally, what do you do 
about scripts? PATH doesn't work there, and so you'd have to first edit 
the #!-line before executing it.

On the other hand, multilib will never be a permanent solution, I see it 
as a nice way to keep compatibility with old stuff, but as soon as 
companies are starting to provide 64bit binaries, it will slowly 
disappear from amd64's sight.

So the final question is: Is it really worth the effort?

Regards,

-- 
Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 Operational Co-Lead
blubb@gentoo.org
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