Debian multiarch support
About
Multiarch is the term being used to refer to the capability of a system to run applications of multiple different binary targets on the same system. For example running a i386-linux-gnu application on an amd64-linux-gnu system. This example is a common case, but many other working combinations are possible. More details about multiarch are available on the upstream site. This page tracks Debian's multiarch efforts.
News
- 2010.09
- Multiarch-ready apt (v0.8) has made it into squeeze. Dpkg wasn't quite ready unfortunately.
- 2010.08.04
At Debconf10 we thrashed out a proposal for new ABI names which are necessary to implement multiarch correctly
- 2010.06.30
Discussion at the Linaro/Ubuntu sprint in Prague produced this very useful document on how compilers, paths, linkers, and loaders fit together:
- 2009.07.25
The info below is out of date and for historical value. See MultiarchSpec for the current cross-distro work.
- 2008.06.23
- I've updated the old multiarch patches for dpkg 1.14.20 and uploaded them to the Debian Multiarch Alioth Project patch tracker.
- The patches should add multiarch support except for dependency tracking. But everything should works as is as long as multiarch is not actively used. Dependency tracking is work in progress.
Old Resources
- Forums
- #multiarch on the oftc.net IRC network
- Documents
- Talks
debconf4 - Multiarch: why and how, a proposal - June 1, 2004 - Tollef Fog Heen, Matt Taggart - Porto Alegre, Brazil html | pdf
debconf5 - Multiarch a proposal and an implementation - July 10, 2005 Tollef Fog Heen html Video: mpeg | ogg
debconf5 - Freezing HEL Over (dpkg2.0)- July 15, 2005 Scott James Remnant mpeg | ogg
- IRC discussions
an interesting -rpath thread
- the way to go
?needed preparations for etch dpkg