firefox.i386 in x86_64 repo

[Jay Cliburn]

Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Monday 31 July 2006 21:04, Jay Cliburn wrote:
>> Ditto for flash, and it's also handy for the Sun Java plugin.  I
>> personally hope firefox.i386 is a permanent addition to the x86_64 repo
>> for FC6.  Can someone confirm it is or isn't?
> 
> It may be temporary, it may not be.  We've removed mozilla in favor of Firefox 
> for building things against, so firefox grew a -devel sub package.  However 
> this is a temporary measure until xulrunner is ready for prime time which 
> will provide the basis of the browsing stuff and a -devel package to build 
> against, so that firefox doesn't need a -devel anymore, and packages can use 
> a much smaller xulrunner to develop against.  At that time, firefox may cease 
> to be multilib automatically, however I would entertain requests to force it 
> to be multilib...

Thanks for that information.

I'm indifferent to browser make and model, myself; Firefox just seems to 
be in vogue and I'm accustomed to it now.  But the enduring headache for 
a number of FC x86_64 users is the absence of 64-bit Macromedia Flash 
and Sun Java plugins -- despite the availability gnash and blackdown and 
nspluginwrapper -- and fedoraforum is chock full of people trying to 
figure out how to add i386 repos and install and keep up to date a 
"foreign" arch package in x86_64.  For some AMD64 owners, the decision 
whether to use FCx.i386 or FCx.x86_64 is swayed to i386 by the simple 
desire to avoid the wrestling match with 32-bit Firefox and its plugins 
in a 64-bit Fedora.  (A cursory search of the AMD64 forum at fedoraforum 
will bear out this assertion.)

I wrote a howto at fedoraforum that lays out the steps to get 32-bit 
Firefox installed with Flash and Sun Java in x86_64, but I'm 
occasionally astonished at just how badly people can muck it up by not 
following the instructions to the letter, and sometimes they run into 
gnarly dependency problems that may or may not be of their own making. 
Having 32-bit Firefox in the x86_64 repo significantly simplifies the 
whole process, and would be cheered by many a new Fedora/AMD64 user.

Jay