Why the band-aid?

Why the band-aid?

Posted Jun 14, 2004 2:42 UTC (Mon) by Ross (subscriber, #4065)
In reply to: x86-64 distros needn't cripple themselves to support 32-bit. by JoeBuck
Parent article: Debian x86_64 port ready

There's a problem. It has come up more than one in practice, and even
more often in theory. Why not solve it the right way?

Either libraries should have the arch as part of the filename, there
should be subdirectories for each arch under library directories, or there
should be a directory for each arch.

So you could have one of these:

a) /lib/libc-N.N.N-arch.so
b) /lib/arch/libc-N.N.N.so
c) /lib-arch/libc-N.N.N.so

This would be nice for changes which didn't involve word-size changes.
Such things could include different calling conventions, new processor
instructions, or even emulated systems (so I could have sparc32 and
sparc64 libraries installed in a sane location). This would be really
nice for CDs which boot on multiple types of systems and for libraries
which are compiled with new instructions. For example, both Pentium II
and i386 libraries could exist on a single image and the dynamic linker
could use the right one automatically.

Is this overdesigned, non-Unix-like, too big of a change, or what? It
just seems like anything short is not addressing the real problem.

---

(Log in to post comments)