Re: Should we make WITHOUT_LIB32=yes the default for 11-RELEASE?

Adam McDougall wrote:
> On most amd64 systems I run, I usually set WITHOUT_LIB32=yes in 
> /etc/src.conf because I don't need them.  This weekend I did a stock 
> install on an older AMD64 Core 2 Duo minipc and a buildworld of 
> 10-STABLE took almost two hours with LIB32 and CLANG since much of it 
> gets compiled twice.

As you said, if you build from source, you can specify WITHOUT_LIB32=yes
-- in contrast to systems using official install media and
freebsd-update. The current situation is good, since lib32 is a separate
install set. It makes the binary only people happy and does not put much
burden on the people compiling from source.

> Is it time to deprecate LIB32 in -current for 11-RELEASE?  I realize 
> some ports may need it, but I hope that need is waning and we are just 
> spending a lot of compile time by default for little gain.  We could 
> save a lot of compile time for a lot of users, and they could still 
> opt-in if needed. Putting it up for discussion, not insisting it should 
> be done.  Thanks.

With binary packages becoming usable, there will be more and more people
going binary only for base and packages. Do you really want to break
desktop packages like virtualbox (or wine) for them?

And if you go binary only and get the lib32 set from another machine, it
will not be updated by freebsd-update, if it is not part of the default
build. This would create a vulnerability.

Maybe lib32 can be a package in the spirit of misc/compat10x and
(hopefully) get updated, if there are security updates to the base. As
long as something like that is not the case, lib32 should be part of the
binary distribution not to break binary only systems (especially desktops).

Cheers,
Jan Henrik