32 bit ports on an AMD64 system

[Jim]

> First, I hope that you have a good reason for doing this, because it
> is going to be a PITA, and prone to all sorts of problems. [...]

Unfortunately I do. The 32 bit stuff is *would be really nice, but not
necessary*, but the ability to use extra memory *and* dynamically load
kernel modules is a bit more important to me.

> If you are just talking about unshadowed ports, you could try adding
> something like the following to /etc/make.conf:
>
> .ifdef(32BIT)
> PREFIX=/usr/local/32
> LOCALBASE=/usr/local/32
> LDCONFIG=/sbin/ldconfig -32
> CFLAGS+=-m32
> .endif
>
> and then wrapping your portupgrade, portmaster, or make commands with:
>
> env 32BIT=yes [insert rest of command here]
>
> If there is shadowing, you have to consider how to manage the
> environment PATH so that you can actually run the 32-bit binary
> executables without typing in fully-qualified pathnames every time,
> and maybe also using LD_RUN_PATH or LD_LIBRARY_PATH so that the right
> libraries are used --- you can see how problems crop up at every turn?

I was thinking of leaving the standard paths alone, and setting up one
or more [ba|c|]sh32 alias/scripts which would start up the appropriate
shell, with 32-bit directories at the front of the path. I know I'll
end up having both 32- and 64-bit of Python on my system (many of the
main apps I use require python - but I also want to be able to use
py-psyco), as well as a few copies of the various GUI toolkits in
32-bit.

Thanks for the info,
-Jim Stapleton

-Jim Stapleton