On 12/28/2011 10:25 AM, Michael Lampe wrote:
Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
Biarch is actually only needed for libraries and support packages. Running native i386 application on x86_64 does not make much sense (third-party apps are another thing).
I also like the option to compile, run, test, debug, etc. my own programs as 32 bit. That's why starting with 5.x there's not only the libs, but also the devel-packages.
Biarch is at least to me a valuable feature. Anyway it's all there, just not in the ISOs it seems.
There is a variable in yum.conf called multilib_policy ...
The default in CentOS 5 is all ... the default in CentOS 6 is best. I personally like best better. I only have the bare minimum i386 libraries on my machines (usually none but sometimes a few libraries on workstations)
If you like, you can set multilib_policy to all after you install the i386 items you want on your x86_64 install.
I can tell you that I would personally use something like mock to build or 32-bit items in at least a clean chroot when building/compiling 32 bit things on a 64-bit machine. But to each their own.