> On 2019-11-17, at 06:19, Helmut Jarausch <jarau...@skynet.be> wrote:
> 
> I'd like to "preserve" some packages which do require components I don't like 
> to have "regularly" installed any more like some depending on Python2 or are 
> 32bit.

For Python (any version), use wheels:

https://pypi.org/project/wheel/

You would have to clone/download the packages yourself, and then run `python 
setup.py bdist_wheel` for them. This also ensures that you preserve compiled 
versions of the packages. As time goes on, these older packages will not 
compile against newer GCC/Clang versions without patches. Most popular packages 
already have wheels, although they might not have every combination built.

For anything else, if it doesn't need stuff like hardware 3D acceleration, use 
a VM that retains the packages you want. This also leads into...

If it does need native hardware access, use chroot and/or disk images (that you 
would boot into separately). I prefer to try and create barriers between 
'production' (what I use everyday) and one-off things like some old game that 
only supports 32-bit.

You probably want to retain old versions of toolchains (GCC, binutils, Clang, 
LLVM, etc) in case you need to build anything (built with -mtune not -march). 
Use Gentoo's binpkg format for this with the `qpkg` command. These packages can 
also be deployed on non-Gentoo systems but YMMV as you look for dependencies.

I tend to keep old hardware around for running old software. You might want to 
do the same.

A lot of older (much older) x86 support is being added to MAME everyday. This 
may come in handy in the future to preserve older versions of Linux distros and 
apps/games.

https://www.mamedev.org/releases/whatsnew_0215.txt (search 386)

Andrew

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