On 04-Oct-24 18:34, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote: > On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 11:08:22PM +0200, Andreas Jochens wrote: > > The '/lib64' directory is just ugly and I want to get rid of that > > or at least minimize its use (and I think I am not alone here). > > You're certainly not alone among the Debian amd64 team. I think you, > as a group, are alone in the larger world. I find /lib64 a fairly > elegant solution.
The '/lib64' was created with a 32bit system in mind which had to be supplemented by a few 64bit libraries, while the existing 32bit libraries would stay at '/lib'. The current amd64 port is different. It is a native 64bit port from the beginning, with basically no 32bit libraries at all. Of course, 32bit libraries can be installed to run 32bit legacy binaries, but they are in no way necessary to run the system and definitely should not stay in '/lib' but somewhere in the '/usr' hierarchy. '/lib' should be reserved exclusively for 'Essential shared libraries and kernel modules' as the FHS defines it and as has been good *nix practice since a long time. With this native 64bit setup, it just does not make sense to create a '/lib64' directory and convince a very large number of packages to install their libraries and files there instead of the established and well known '/lib'. Please elaborate why you find '/lib64' elegant in spite of this. > There is a community list on which x86_64 ABI issues can be discussed. > None of the Debian porters have ever come to talk about their > objections to the layout there. If you seriously intend to change the > ABI, then someone ought to have done that by now. There have been many discussions on this subject. I prefer to show a working solution before presenting a proposal to change an existing standard or to establish a new standard. Standards should be taken from working and proven solutions not vice versa. BTW, the ABI document you cited is still a 'Draft Standard' AFAIK and this may have a reason. Moreover, the sentence 'However, Linux puts this in /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2' in that document hardly looks like specifying a definite standard, especially in view of the preceding sentence which tries to establish '/lib/ld64.so.1' as the one and only standard. I am not at all against a compatibility symlink '/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2' to be able to run binaries from other distributions, but we should not make every binary in our system depend on that symlink when everything is really installed in '/lib' as it is in the current amd64 port. Regards Andreas Jochens
