On 4/21/21 8:45 AM, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
What is a 32-bit x86_64 package? Surely it can only be one or the other. Unless the 64-bit package was compiled on a 32-bit platform. But is that relevant? It is the actual content that we are interested in (64 or 32 bit).
A 32-bit x86_64 package is a package for the x86_64 distribution architecture that contains 32-bit binaries intended for co-installation on 64-bit system. This is necessary because openSUSE does not allow co-installation of i586 packages on a 64-bit system unlike Debian or Ubuntu [1], for example. So if you need 32-bit versions of libraries on your 64-bit system in parallel, you will need to repackage the 32-bit libraries into x86_64 packages so that you can have a 32-bit and 64-bit libpng package installed, for example. On Debian and Ubuntu, I can just install the i386 package on an amd64 Debian/ Ubuntu system without having to repackage any 32-bit libraries into amd64 packages, meaning that all 32-bit library packages are automatically available for co-installation on Debian/Ubuntu. This also applies for co-installation of runtime libraries for ARM or PowerPC for cross-installation. On Debian/Ubuntu, I can just install the native armhf packages on my amd64 system while on openSUSE, I will have to put those armhf libraries into x86_64 packages so that they are installable on an x86_64 system. It's unfortunate that other distributions besides Debian/Ubuntu never adopted MultiArch. It's incredibly useful, especially when you are doing cross-builds.
But why both?
If you want to run 32-bit code on your 64-bit system, you need 32-bit runtime dependencies. Also, if you want to cross-compile for another architecture such as ARM, for example.
If I try to delete these they all seem to be referencing each other. I can't seem to find the actual application that pulled them in.
If I look at applications (not just libraries), I see that there is both wine and wine-32bit installed. As I only run 64-bit Windows apps in wine, would I need wine-32bit.
Well, the majority of all Windows applications available are still 32-bit (if you consider legacy applications that are no longer developed as well), so if you want to have maximum Wine compatibility, you need the 32-bit libraries as well. Adrian