amd64 questions

[Mike Meyer]

metaquestions:

The amd64 ilst might be a better place for this, but it's listed as
"for discussion of porting FreeBSD to amd64", and these aren't really
questions about porting FreeBSD to amd64. Maybe the list needs to be
repurposed?

There doesn't appear to be a FAQ (or FAQ section) for
platform-specific questions. I found lots of people asking these
questions, but no answers

My conclusions after groveling around on the web, and a variety of
freebsd mail list archives, it seems the state of several things in
the amd64 world as of 6.1 is (if any of these are wrong, pointers to
or documentations on how to do this would be greatly appreciated):

1) The compiler can build i386 binaries, but the toolchain in general
   doesn't do the right thing with the -m32 flag.

2) The system can run i386 binaries, but the pkg system doesn't
   support installing packages from other architectures.

3) openoffice doesn't build on amd64, and the i386 build doesn't run
   on amd64, so the recommended way to run openoffice on amd64 is to
   run the Linux build.

	Thanks,
	<mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>		http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.