Arch Linux

Meyithi

Member

From: Wirral, UK

Registered: 2009-06-21

Posts: 550

Website

Disadvantages of multi-lib?

Ello

I've been playing with my shiny new install of Arch for a fortnight now, and I'm loving it.  However, I'm missing being able to play the odd game on Wine and some 64 bit games I play have 32 bit installers (Regnum) so I'm going to have to install some 32 bit libs.

I understand the Arch stance on multi-lib, and that's fine, but I'm wondering about the disadvantages of going multi-lib?

I have a fairly powerful rig (ex-Windows gaming machine, Dual Core 3.2gb CPU, 1TB on the disks, 8800GT, 8 Gig RAM) and so resources aren't an issue anywhere, what else do I need to consider?

Last edited by Meyithi (2009-07-01 23:07:11)

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ataraxia

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2007-05-06

Posts: 1,553

Re: Disadvantages of multi-lib?

Multi-lib means the "default" library path is different on different architectures. You can't just assume libs go in /usr/lib - any build system will have to have extra support (i.e., hacks) to link against, and install, "ordinary" libs in /usr/lib64 on 64-bit systems. That's my biggest problem with it.

ngoonee

Forum Fellow

From: Between Thailand and Singapore

Registered: 2009-03-17

Posts: 7,358

Re: Disadvantages of multi-lib?

I would recommend the chroot approach, that's what I'm currently using for Wine (daily usage, no issues that aren't wine-related, that is, also appear on a 32-bit install).

Keeps things nicely separated, I feel. Wiki has instructions, as always. Multi-lib makes you realize just how many libs most of your apps have, and I'd rather they were all in my chroot (and installable directly from pacman) rather than in my main system with many of them coming from AUR. Updates are faster, for one, if I wanted to compile all my libs I'd go gentoo.

Side benefit, when the time comes that I don't need 32-bit at all, its just "rm -R <whatever the chroot dir is>" and my install is pristine. No need to worry about pacman -Rsn and whether anything was left behind.

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