I find myself having to run 32bit BIRT on my 64bit Slackware.

Multilib installed was the "default" from AlienBob (gcc&glibc multilib upgrades, plus the compat32 provided)

I dug up and installed 32bit Eclipse, calling at launch 32bit 1.7 JDK, installed a very old 32bit xulrunner(again, alienbob repo for slackware 13.37) and defined it in my .ini explicitly, and still am unable to use the internal web browser inside the program.
(This resolved the famed "no more handles && MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME env variable not set error, but am now getting XPCOM error -2147467259 when trying to use internal browser for preview)
https://www.eclipse.org/swt/faq.php suggested a lot of things, and I think the only ones I didn't try yet is to compile SWT from scratch for those particular versions (Indigo SR1 and Kepler SR 1)

Rest assured this is a long-term project in 32bit and waiting for version upgrade related to BIRT from eithr 3.7.1 or 4.3.1 to more recent ones, or architecture bump from 32bit to 64bit is not an option

While aware that this is a program-related error, I'm writing here in hope that Slackware and multilib are flexible enough to get Eclipse(BIRT) to work as 32bit without resorting to use of VM.

Attached is the content of the relevant eclipse.ini file and please do not hesitate to ask for any additional info if needed

Attached Thumbnails

 

Quick search tells me eclipse has dropped 32bit support for both linux and windows builds, years ago.
Are you sure 3.7.1 or 4.3.1 is supported upstream? If not, you may have to freeze the host system to exact library versions used to build these.
Just saying, I only read about it and don't use it personally, but I've often seen other unsupported software which required such freeze.
From what I've seen, it was always cost > benefit for upstream to support old builds.

It's a vague territory, officially BIRT versions 3.7.1. and 4.3.1 are supported for certain products from IBM, like Maximo, but their guide completely ignores the fact that anything other than WindowsOS exists, and offers no insight as to why that PDF is written the way that it is

What are my options? Spin up a 32bit Slackware 13.37 VM or older, and try to get it to run in there, then using logs/diffs to figure out what libraries/packages are missing from -current and then install them to my host-current-multilib?

As for the cost/benefit, we opened a 10y project with a client, last year, and it seems like this 32bit_BIRT isn't going anywhere. At best, we will upgrade to "just" 4.3.1 for all our clients in the next year (hopefully), but the fact remains that the BIRT framework has to be 32bit still, and the problems that remain with it.