Multilib in FC7? Disable by default?

[seth vidal]

On Sun, 2006-08-20 at 20:18 +0300, Gilboa Davara wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-08-20 at 19:13 +0200, dragoran wrote:
> > Gilboa Davara wrote:
> > > Hello all,
> > >
> > > I've got a simple question that I'd like to table for discussion.
> > > Current -devel tree seems to suggest that FC6 multilib FC6 has almost
> > > doubled in size (from ~13% of the total package count in FC4/5 to ~24%
> > > in the current devel tree)
> > > On the other hand, FC6 is about to include native 64bit OO and gcj (with
> > > browser support) builds, lowering the need for the default i386 support,
> > > as only Wine/Extra actually -requires- multilib support to run.
> > > More-ever, I'd venture to guess that most x86_64 installation will most
> > > likely be used to run native 64bit services and application - mostly on
> > > servers and workstation - lowering the need for multilib even further.
> > > (You won't run 32bit flash on your brand new 32 cores server... let
> > > alone that fact that flash/win32codecs are not supported by Fedora.)
> > >
> > > My question is simple: why not add an installation option to disable
> > > multilib support completely.
> > >
> > > Mind you, I use my workstation to run 32bit software and games... but I
> > > rather disable multilib completely and create a small, specialized
> > > 'stupid' i386 chroot (no DE, no user-applications; only a basic set of
> > > i386  libraries and UI toolkits) and use it to run i386 applications in
> > > a confined space. (Xen/i386 might be an interesting option - though it
> > > won't be able to run hardware GL applications which I need... ;))
> > >
> > > - Gilboa
> > >
> > >   
> > 
> > Sorry but I have to disagree here, the x86_64 arch is able to nativly 
> > run 32bit and 64bit software, so supporting multilib is using a feature 
> > of the hardware and there are many 32bit only apps out there and this 
> > also wont change in the near feature. If you don't need the 32bit libs 
> > you can simply remove all i386/i686 rpms (yum remove glibc.i686 should 
> > do it).
> 
> I'm not suggesting the multilib is not required, I am suggesting to give
> the option to disable it during the installation.
> BTW, isn't 'yum remove glibc.i686' a temporary solution? Won't yum will
> try to reinstall the missing package tree once I run 'yum update' and/or
> 'yum install foo'?

then in your /etc/yum.conf add:
exclude=*.i386 *.i686 *.i586 *.i486


that should ensure yum won't try to add anything like that back.

-sv