[Rd] Multiple sub-architecture: linking issue

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 11 June 2012 at 09:33, Renaud Gaujoux wrote:
| On 11/06/2012 03:43, Simon Urbanek wrote:
|     As far as R is concerned it works equally well on Linux - the problem there is more on the side of distributions, because it is more unusual to have multi-lib Linux (originally it was used on Linux only to get 3rd party [mostly proprietary] 32-bit binaries working on 64-bit systems and that is now less of an issue). As I said in the original post it works reasonably well on Debian (not for all libraries since only a subset is available, but all the basic ones) -- there were shakeups in Ubuntu which were messing with the multilib support, so I don't know the current status but I can check at work tomorrow (probably not for something as ancient as natty, though).

Right.  I still haven't gotten bugged within Debian to ensure that my
packages are build.  More and more 'core' libraries seem to appear in
multi-arch mode though.  We're getting there, slowly but surely.
 
| I think you are right Simon: the issue likely comes from my Linux distrib,
| which I effectively should upgrade. This gives me one more reason to do it
| asap.

[ As a total aside: A nice low risk option is to first test in a virtual
env. I am very happy with my virtual instances, using Kvm and libvirt, on my
main server ... ]

| If you have some -- even untested -- clues on how to get things working on
| Natty I am happy to test them though, as upgrades always have hidden issues and
| time black holes...

I usually disagree with statements like this. Debian does this pretty reliably, and
I also update all my Ubuntu machines within a few weeks of the releases. And
Ubuntu 12.04 has been a rather smooth upgrade on all of them. But if you're
several releases behind, maybe you did more 'funky' stuff you now need to
consider.

Dirk, who thinks this should have been on r-sig-debian all along

-- 
Dirk Eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org | http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com