Interesting I never thought about slackpkg being included, but looking at it now it would be great to have slacpkg in and then using that to download/install multilib automagically sounds like a good alternative. Again, this thread like PAM thread is mere speculation, though to be fair I should have stated it earlier. I also would like to thank you Alien for all your efforts in multilib. I guess the only other thing about multilib is keeping it updated via patches if there are any security concerns, although that probably sounds like more work for a 'one-man' project for multilib. Hell don't get me wrong if I knew what I was doing in creating packages by hand I would definitely contribute, but I also don't have that much time though :jawa:

Crazy left field question...

How come slackpkg and slackpkg+ can't be merged into a single entity?

it seems to me, that Slackware just tries to officially distance itself from most of the third party projects out there. It acknowledges them, however -- for instance the SlackBuilds.org project is mentioned in the official release announcement of the new version.

The two developers would have to discuss that among themselves.

Eric

@alien BOB: hey mate keep it going...

dont keep adding packages in my opinion....kiss it...
power to users!

let them use it when they want to and till then alien BOBs repos just fine...
i just had this multilib package installed last nite...yesp u guess it from alien BOBs builds yes....

happy slacking!!!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
my blog: http://nightslacker.wordpress.com
slack

Although, this might be a good question, why not have the multilib ready gcc and glibc installed by default? The rest could still be pulled from Eric's repo with slackpkg+.

I am VERY thankful to Eric Hameleers for his work. We may not even have a 64-bit Slackware without him!

But here is something that is strange to me, why don't more people run some kind of post-install script? You can pretty much add or subtract whatever you want by doing this. Feel free to fork mine if you don't have one:

https://github.com/ryanpcmcquen/config-o-matic

It sets up multilib, slackpkg+, sbopkg, installs several packages, detects and sets up alsa output, lilo, bashrc, bash_profile, vimrc and a host of other things (utf-8, switch from stable to current, installing wicd, and still more). It is pretty easily forked because most variables are declared at the start of the script (similar to SBo style). Once I wrote a post-install script that I run after every fresh install, I stopped wanting everything to change so much.

Slackware is a beautiful blank slate to make into your own work of art, and isn't that why we all love it?


P.S. It is mostly idempotent.

has been mentioned, see #15

Eric's stuff is wonderful, no question and I use it,not just the multilib packages.
but is is also s single person project, so what happens if Eric decides to take a longer holiday?
ok, we have the build scripts and I could help myself, as other can,
but the base tools chain should really be part of the distribution.
(and a pure 64 bit might be nice but some professionals told me that if you want speed you run 32bit software on 64 bit platforms, and I belive them :-)

I,ve check multilib in extra in this pool, but I really mean only gcc and glibc. Only this two packages interfere between 32 and 64 bit (I'm not sure about glibc), others can be easily install alongside. So I agree with Eric. We should convince Pat somehow to do it... At least to put multilib gcc and glibc in extra.

Missing option:
I run 32-bit only:twocents:

I'm not using multib in 14.1, but have used it in previous releases. Voted for keeping things as they are: Alien Bob's packages.