Trouble with 32 bit Gtk app on 64 bit system

[Christopher Lees]

On Tue, 2010-03-16 at 12:00 +0000,
ubuntu-devel-discuss-request at lists.ubuntu.com wrote:

> Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:10:16 +0800
> From: Christopher Chan <christopher.chan at bradbury.edu.hk>
> Subject: Re: Trouble with 32 bit Gtk app on 64 bit system - no or
> 	misleading	error msgs
> To: ubuntu-devel-discuss at lists.ubuntu.com
> Message-ID: <4B9F2ED8.2010802 at bradbury.edu.hk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> 
> > I don't mean to be a "[citation needed] troll", but I've honestly never
> > heard anything suggesting this before. Would you mind explaining how
> > RPMs handle 32/64 better than DEBs? My understanding was that as long as
> > you installed ia32-libs then you shouldn't have to do anything else; the
> > software having problems in this thread is some sort of anomaly.
> >
> 
> It probably is not rpm being better than deb. But right now most 32-bit 
> library packages cannot just be installed on a 64-bit installation. 
> 32-bit packages will take over /usr/lib 'namespace' in a 64-bit 
> installation when they should be stuffing themselves under /usr/lib32. 
> It is as if you need to have a separate repository for 64-bit distros 
> just so that their 32-bit library packages can be told to make their 
> home in /usr/lib32 and not try to take over /usr/lib which really 
> belongs to 64-bit libraries on a 64-bit installation. In fact, this is 
> exactly how Fedora and RHEL work. They have a separate repository for 
> 32-bit distros and for 64-bit distros. The 64-bit distros' repos have 
> both 32-bit and 64-bit packages which are going to stick their contents 
> in the places.
> 
> The problem therefore is the way packaging is currently done and the 
> repository architecture. That is why you have to resort to an uber 
> ia32-libs package which is really not a solution at all but a cloth 
> being tied around a leak of a pipe. It helps but does not completely 
> solve the problem.

On the rare occasion that I've needed to run a raw 32-bit program on
64-bit Ubuntu, I have used the Getlibs program to fetch the 32-bit
libraries from (presumably) the 32-bit Ubuntu repository. Getlibs is not
in the repositories, but it's available from
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=474790