A goal for release 1.0 is partial multiarch support.

See also the multiarch design details.

Scope

It should be possible to manually install development packages of specific architectures to facilitate cross building of packages. All packages that provide architecture-dependent libraries and header files should be coinstallable, so that no major changes need to be made to file locations to complete the multiarch implementation. Note that coinstallation support in the package manager is not a goal for this release series.

This means that:

• A file system hierarchy with architecture-specific directories for libraries and header files should be designed and documented in the Packaging Policy,
• Architecture-dependent libraries and header files provided by packages that are to be coinstallable should be installed in architecture-specific locations,
• To the extent possible and reasonable, architecture-independent files should not be provided by packages that are to be coinstallable,
• Relevant toolchain packages should be configured and/or patched to use architecture-specific library and include paths,

Not included in this release goal are:

• Architecture-specific directories for executables,
• Coinstallability of packages providing executable files,
• Support in opkg for installing packages built for foreign architectures,
• Control information to document package coinstallability and inter-architecture dependency satisfaction, and
• Handling of architecture-independent files provided by coinstallable architecture-dependent packages or other coinstallability considerations in package management.