Multiarch is the term being used to refer to the capability of a system to install and run applications of multiple different binary targets on the same system. For example running a i386-linux-gnu application on an amd64-linux-gnu system. This example is the most common case, but many other working combinations are possible, such as armel and armhf.

Multiarch also simplifies cross-building, where foreign-architecture libraries and headers are needed on a system during building.

The existing proposals allow for the co-installation of libraries and headers for different architectures, but not (yet) binaries. So you can have either the i386 version of a binary, or the amd64 version, but not both (using conventional /bin paths). All the dependencies will be installed and available for the corresponding binary.

Multiarch is a significant and powerful development, and affects many processes and aspects of the system. The immediate practical effects are getting rid of the ia32-libs package, and allowing proper cross-architecture dependencies for cross-building.

Copyright 2017 Chouaib Hm

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