Andre Huebner escribió: and cause developers to watch their steps of
cost of expensive patching/loss of older software?
the directory layout is a tiny part of the problem, thinking that having libraries in /usr/lib instead of /usr/lib64 will avoid the need of code changes is a very naive way to see things. The place where libraries are doesnt make your software "64bit ready" in anyway see the section "Porting code" of document: http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/DownloadableAssets/dwamd_AMD64_... just to have an idea... in short.. if it compiles does not mean it will work ;-) You have the perfect example package where changing the library locations path dont fix anything, PHP4 has a not minor quantity of 64 bit portability problems, that wont ever be fixed, most critical ones where fixed in PHP 5.1.x and the vast mayority of them are fixed in PHP 5.2.x..So.. you may see a lot of strange behaviuors ( that people tend to workaround) crashes..etc.. even in the cases we wanted to fix the problems, we can't :-P because many of the fixes will break the ABI and people out there do rely in third party, propietary extensions... If you use a 64 bit system , you must use PHP 5.x for this and many other reasons... -- "A computer is like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy. " Cristian Rodríguez R. Platform/OpenSUSE - Core Services SUSE LINUX Products GmbH Research & Development http://www.opensuse.org/