32 bit ports on an AMD64 system

[b. f.]

On 9/1/09, b. f. <bf1783 at googlemail.com> wrote:

>. If you
> don't use a jail ... well, I have not tried to install a large number
> of 32-bit and 64-bit ports in parallel, so I am not sure if the
> default setup for our loader will make the appropriate distinctions
> between 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the same libraries depending
> upon the executables or libraries that need them, but I think that
> there is a good chance that it will not, and that you will have to do
> some extra work to make sure that it does. In the case that it does
> not, your only alternative is to either patch a large number of ports
> (very time-consuming and error-prone), or to add loader environment
> variables to your 32-bit shell scripts to make the loader look in the
> 32-bit library directories first, or to write a custom loader script
> to only load the appropriate libraries depending upon whether the
> executable or library that needs them  is 32-bit or 64-bit.  It would

Ok, so maybe I was a bit too pessimistic here, and the framework that
is already in place to handle the 32-bit-only ports will suffice to
deal with the case of parallel installs of 32-bit and 64-bit ports
libraries as well, provided that ldconfig is invoked with the proper
options when registering the libraries, so that the right hints are
available, and the ports are built properly.  If you are content to
use 32-bit binaries on top of a 64-bit base system, try it out on a
test case first -- some of the diagnostic environment variables listed
in rtld(1) may help, along with ldd(1).  It still seems like more
trouble than it is worth to me, though.

b.