On 11/25/05, Mark Knecht <markknecht@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > There aren't too many limitations on the use of non-multimedia > application code in portage. The trick seems to be deciding when to > use ~x86 and ~amd64. That's a bit of a frustration but not a major > hinderance. I can answer that. You never use ~x86 on an amd64 running in 64 bit mode. It can cause serious issues if you do. You may not have run into such issues but they are there and I have (first time I installed I decided to take that shortcut as well). The correct way to install code is to use ~amd64 if you need to. If it is not there then you add it if you really want the program but keep in mind that it means that the program very well might not work on amd64 or may be incredibly unstable. Why not use ~x86? Think of the following scenario: * app-theoretical has ~x86 but not ~amd64 in the latest release because it has been reported as unstable by most people.. * app-theoretical depends on lib-theoretical. * You have lib-theoretical installed but it is a version previous to the reqs on this latest release of app-theoretical - many of your programs require this lib - you have a *stable* install of this library. * The new release of lib-theoretical does not work on amd64 and is known to have many issues for many people. Therefore the keyword ~amd64 is not included. You run emerge on app-theoretical with the ~x86 accept flags and it replaces lib-theoretical with something that does not work. Not even updating your programs will fix the issue. It also causes problems when you mix flags like that because of the way emerge chooses to install requirements. You just don't do it or eventually your system will start to act shitty. Gentoo has a good article on this in one of their FAQ or something for the amd64.
