Oh, please. Spare me the melodrama. Personally, I do NOT need Eric or anyone else. I'm quite capable of creating IA32 emulation libraries myself if needed. Frankly, I don't have the time to commit to this process and Eric is finally realizing the futility of the current process of adding 32 bit compilation ability to Slackware64 as well. Again, most users do NOT need 32 bit compilation ability. Actually, if Eric really wants to help the community, he'll adopt a less intrusive and time-consuming process for HIMSELF and USERS by using his multilib creation privately and release IA32 emulation libraries publicly for distribution. No one is ungrateful for Eric's work. However, the time eventually comes when any process is up for review and this time has likely come for Eric. The current process simply won't work over time for several reasons which have already been stated. Actually, it'd take a group of members to continue the process started by Eric.

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Don't speak for 'most users' as I would guess 'most users' actually need the stuff to compile wine and virtual box but that's just a guess. Just because you don't need these, doesn't mean other people don't.

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@tpreizel: What you are saying is: I would rather see the IA32 emulation layer in Slackware. No need for the ability to compile 32 bit software. I can make the emulation layer. But I don't want to spend my time on it, so it would be better if Eric does it. Because of reasons that were stated where?I must admit that I am relative new to Slackware. Eric is not, he has done a lot of work for this distribution. What is your contribution, that you think you are the reviewer?
Melodrama? May be. But from whom?

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I use Erics Multilib and have compiled several 32 bit packages (including firefox pre 64bit flash, skype and wine), I also do some android development and have to use several pre-compiled 32bit binaries so I have found his work on the subject immensely helpful, I lack the expertise to put together my own 32 bit emulation so having clear instructions on how to implement the multilib system has made my slackware experience far more complete, many thanks to you AlienBOB for all of your hard work for the slackware community, most of us appreciate it.

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Ah, so you think you can read my mind? You are reading it wrong then.
You are a known Bluewhite64 fanboi. Bluwhite64 is a Slamd64 rip-off with some bits removed (the multilib capability). It pretends to be a pure 64bit OS but then at some point, the developer thought that he should add a "IA32 emulation" layer anyway, thereby refuting his claim to be a "pure 64bit Slackware".
That "IA32" layer is a crude hack, it needs a lot of work and it uses "lib32" library directory names, which is a non-standard way to mix 64bit with 64bit libraries on a single system. According to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (see http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#LIB64) the use of "lib32" should be left exclusively to 32bit libraries on the IA64 platform, whereas our AMD64 platform (the official name for the PC x86_64 platform) should use "lib" for 32bit libraries and "lib64" for 64bit libraries. This is what Slackware follows.

Tell me how it is intrusive, and time consuming?
Is it "intrusive" because you have to replace your 64bit glibc packages with multilib versions which I compiled for you?
It is a simple one-line "upgradepkg" command which you use for that.
And only if you want to be able to compile 32bit software, you can also upgrade your gcc packages to my multilib-capable versions which is also achieved through the same one-line command. It is not even mandatory. My multilib packagea are primarily meant to run 32bit software, and you get optional compilation for free.

If you actually want to run 32bit binaries on the 64bit Slackware OS, you need your C libraries to be aware of them. That is why you upgrade to my glibc packages. You also have to convert and install a subset of 32bit Slackware packages to provide the 32bit libraries your 32bit program requires. All this can be achieved easily using the scripts you install with my "compat32-tools" package. You do not have to recompile anything. You just have to re-package some of the 32bit Slackware packages. That is a process which takes minutes, not hours.

We are still talking about running 64bit Slackware here. You are aware, that from day one, slackware64 is created as a 64bit platform that can easily be extended to full multilib capabilities. If you want to run 32bit applications on 64bit Slackware, then the packages that I have been providing are a time-saving and easy road to multilib capability. If you are so intent on running 32bit applications but hate my work, then by all means, install the 32bit version of Slackware! You get both Slackware versions on the single DVD that you've surely bought in the Slackware Store!

No-one forces you to use Slackware64. No-one forces you to install my multilib packages. People like Skaperen want to find out for themselves if there are alternative ways of adding multilib capabilities. I like that, when someone wants to go beyond what's already available.

But what you show in your posts, tpreitzel, is pure spite and trolling, coming from a person who has gotten stuck in the use of a deprecated distro called Bluewhite64. Go ahead, "continue" the "process started by Eric". I would not want to infest my Slackware64 computer with broken-by-design ideas originating from Bluewhite64.

Eric

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Eric --

Please allow me to express my sincere gratitide for your
multilib packages/

I use the features you built in to multilib every day.

I build C-programs on my slackware-64 system that have to
run on 32 and 64 bit systems. And because of MSys / MinGW
I can also compile the same programs for Windows Systems
on my Slackware-64 system with your multilib packages.

Please keep up your good work !

Thanks.

-- kjh

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I am a satisfied user of the slackware(32) and slackware64, but I do not use multilib at all.

Maybe I'm a fundamentalist of PureARCH, BUT I do not think it's correct, someone to criticize, without evidence, the hard work of AlienBOB!

If someone thinks he can do the job better than AlienBOB, he must show us his work to see if it's true!

Until then, I see just (some) trolling ...

I'll tell you something... I do not use multilib myself, either :-)

I used to have it installed, but at the moment I do not have a need for it (there is no proprietary 32bit software on my computers now).

Eric

PS Darth Vader, what happened to Darkstar Linux? It seems that http://www.darkstarlinux.ro/ is waiting for content.

As Eric said in his post, you don't cross-compile only re-package from a 32bit slackware tree. Regarding stuff you don't use, you don't install the whole 32bit tree. The script massconvert32.sh re-packages only some packages that are considered essential libraries and are hardcoded in it. Even with this reduced set, you don't need to install every package if you are familiar with deps. I have only installed the packages that are needed by eagle and wine.

I tried the above command and again i only get wine binaries and other stuff i compiled myself and i wanted on /usr.

With opensource you have the freedom ofcourse to do your own thing and more so with slackware that doesn't get in your way. Even if it doesn't work the way you wanted, you'll still learn something.

Who forced you (or anyone for that matter) to use Eric's packages ? Since you are quite capable of doing the X thing, then feel free to do it.

[irony]
Shame to Eric for doing futile things and for choosing _himself_ how he helps the community. Let's shoot him.
[/irony]

If you actually _were_ ungrateful for Eric's work, what would you say then ? Of course every action is reviewed and judged. I personally review Eric's work as great and i appreciate he devotes his time to do it. Let time show if it will work or not.

+1,
Thank you AlienBob for all your effort. I use multilib for Wine and I very much appreciate that I'm able to compile my own packages thanks entirely to your multilib system.

Well, it was a very difficult period for us in recent years. Romania was not exactly a workers paradise in the last years. But slowly, things return to normal, as you see, I'm (somewhat) active here, and this happens in other places too.

About Darkstar Linux. As you know, Darkstar = Slackware + graphics tools and (automated) dependencies. The downside is that ALICE/YaLI (our suite of graphics tools) was written in Qt3 and is outdated today. Now we are working on porting of ALICE/YaLI into Qt4, with many improvements.

About our site. Well, the current version is fresh and still is not ready, we work in the unpublished manner at its structure and functionality (and I hate the image management used by Drupal!)

Finally, even we think that our graphical tools are not of interest to our upstream, yet we prepare two utilities that can work very well in (pure) Slackware. It's about pkgBuild, that is a rpmbuild-like package builder for Slackware, and CParted, which is similar in functionality to GParted, but ... is a pure console tool.

PS. I apologize to all for this off-topic post!

However he builds the multilib package is fine by me. I just have no need for using the cross-32 compiler since I will have a pure-32 environment. Others who need to build software that runs on 32-bit environments may want/need to use that.

Indeed. My home desktop and file server are running Slackware 12.0 (still) with my own init scripts having replaced all of the Slackware ones. It has worked fine over several versions. Slackware is an excellent starting point for virtually any goal one has.

Why my own init scripts? Just to see if I could.