Re: [PATCH] buildsystem: add support for multilib

Hi,

On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 10:30:22AM +0000, Rob Kendrick wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 09:38:03AM +0100, David Tardon wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > this patch and the follow ups for libraries (only those I am interested
> > in, sorry) make it much easier to build on typical Linux distributions,
> > where 64-bit libs are put into /usr/lib64.
>
> What is typical? The idea of allowing where to put the libraries to be
> more flexible is nice, but I've never used a Linux distribution that put
> libraries for the running system anywhere other than in /usr/lib/

Theoretically, any distribution that follows FHS, e.g., Fedora / CentOS
or SuSE. Debian and Ubuntu do not do that (I thought they did :-) and
instead use more powerful multi-arch concept (see
https://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/TheCaseForMultiarch), which puts
libraries into architecture-specific subdirectories of /usr/lib, e.g.,
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu. Gentoo seems to use /usr/lib for packages
that do not support multilib and either /usr/lib64 or /usr/lib32 for
those that do. Archlinux always puts native architecture libraries in
/usr/lib, but on 64-bit system it allows 32-bit libraries in /usr/lib32.

Note that this is mostly pretty old stuff: I remember /usr/lib64 being
used in Fedora 8 6 years ago.

I have not checked any other distributions, but I hope this is
compelling enough to show that the extra abstraction is needed.

D.