On śro, 2017-08-02 at 19:07 +0000, Martin Vaeth wrote:
> Mike Gilbert <floppym@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 1:51 PM, Martin Vaeth <martin@mvath.de> wrote:
> > > If this already was discussed then sorry for the noise:
> > > 
> > > What is the rationale for merging lib32 with lib?
> > > Wouldn't it be somewhat cleaner to have a completely
> > > split structure
> > > 
> > > lib64
> > > lib32
> > > libx32 (possibly)
> > > lib
> > 
> > Here are a couple of reasons:
> > 
> > 1. Other distros (notably Red Hat and Fedora) put 32-bit libs in "lib".
> 
> According to bug 506276, Debian has instead merged 64-bit to lib.
> So it seems to me that there is no "mainstream" to follow.
> Perhaps striving for the cleanest solution would be the best?

'No mainstream' as you claim it doesn't mean it's fine to invent yet
another completely incompatible solution.

> > 2. The path to the 32-bit runtime linker (/lib/ld-linux.so.2) is
> > hard-coded in every x86 binary on your system.
> 
> I am afraid that these must stay exceptional in any case:
> Also currently, gentoo (and if I understood correctly, also Debian
> and Red Hat) has the possible ld-linux{,-x86-64,-x32}.so.2 symlinks
> in _all_ /lib* directories; I suppose that this is not intended to
> change. (I assume that a change might break some proprietary binaries
> which might have hard-coded the "wrong" directory.)

This is not true.

$ ls /lib*/ld-linux*
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2  /lib/ld-linux.so.2  /libx32/ld-linux-x32.so.2

The only symlinks ever there was in /lib64 because of the Gentoo symlink
deviation.

The 32-bit proprietary binaries use exactly /lib which is the main
reason for the switch. Plus, the linker uses /lib path independently of
how multilib is done on the system.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny