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Debian multiarch supportDebian multiarch supportPosted May 18, 2006 14:14 UTC (Thu) by msw (subscriber, #3733)In reply to: Debian multiarch support by dmantione Parent article: Debian multiarch support
I helped implement the multiarch support in RPM, and it's not just that simple. Often you need to install both 32-bit and 64-bit packages at the same time. Sometimes bits of those packges overlap. This (sort of) works in RPM because two packages are allowed to own the same file if the contents are identical. This lead to a ton of work to make the packages in Red Hat produce exactly the same contents (for the non-architecture-specific files) on both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. Sounds like fun? I assure you it wasn't.
We took that experience and designed a new package management system from the ground up. One of the primary design goals was elegant multi-arch and multi-lib support. The result is Conary, which does a pretty amazing job. We've easily installed 32-bit OpenOffice.org or Firefox on a 64-bit system - out of the box.
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