amd64-libs for Debian
--------------------

This package delivers a set of pre-compiled amd64 (x86_64 family)
shared libraries, so that amd64 Linux applications can be executed on
amd64 sytems running Debian i386. This is a lame hack to solve this
problem for the Debian 3.1 (sarge) release, and should be replaced or
updated with a better solution for later releases.

The "right" way to do this will be to extend the Debian package
management toolset so that it understands how to install packages from
multiple architectures onto a single system, perhaps with some sort of
sorting of choices by architecture preference.  There are a number of
resulting issues that need to be sorted out, however.  Too many
packages install architecture dependent files in paths that do not
have an architecture specific component, so installing the same
package from more than one architecture on the same system would cause
file overlaps.

The implementation of this package is adopted from ia32-libs which is
similar to the TurboLinux package of the same name (ia32-libs) it was
inspired by.  We take a set of amd64 .deb's and sources from the
binary-amd64 tree from http://debian-amd64.alioth.debian.org/, unpack
them, and repackage them for delivery with a slightly changed
directory tree on the i386 systems.  Appropriate ldconfig calls in the
postinst script register the delivered libraries with the dynamic
loader.  So, as long as all the shared libraries needed by the
application in question are included in this package, the application
should "just work" once this package is installed.

If more libraries are needed, file wishlist severity bugs against
amd64-libs in the Debian bug tracking system at bugs.debian.org and
we'll try to oblige.  For a quick fix, you can download the amd64-libs
source package, add the debs in the "update-packages" file and rebuild
and install the package locally with:

	apt-get install devscripts fakeroot build-essential
	apt-get build-dep amd64-libs
	debuild -us -uc
	dpkg -i ../amd64-libs*deb

Enjoy!

 -- Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>, Wed,  4 Aug 2004 03:33:35 +0200
