Re: i386 running amd64 binaries? [LWN.net]

Re: i386 running amd64 binaries?

Posted May 19, 2006 11:48 UTC (Fri) by interalia (subscriber, #26615)
In reply to: i386 running amd64 binaries? by ncm
Parent article: Debian multiarch support

multiarch is mostly just a structural thing. Obviously, rearranging files and dynamic linkers on its own won't allow someone to run binaries for amd64 on i386, as you implied. But it lets you parallel-install them cleanly, which is great. multiarch not meant for simply having amd64/i386 co-exist, the idea is to have a consistent structure even if you want three or more architectures, something that the "/lib and /lib64" solution doesn't provide. The proponents contrast multiarch with the existing approach, which they call bi-arch.

As posited in previous comments, you might have a third /usr/lib/xx-yy-zz area for cross-compiling to ppc. Then you might run the compiled ppc programs using a native amd64 binary which is a ppc emulator. Perhaps even WINE could somehow become an arch for this purpose. If you read the threads on multiarch, people have come up with all sorts of ideas that can be done when you aren't limited to whether something is 32-bit or 64-bit.

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