Packaging

The following sections discuss packaging considerations for 32-bit and 64-bit applications.

Placement of Libraries and Programs

The placement of new libraries and programs follows the standard conventions described in "Libraries". The 32-bit libraries continue to be located in the same place, while the 64-bit libraries should be placed in the specific architecture-dependent directory under the normal default directories. Placement of 32-bit and 64-bit specific applications should be transparent to the user.

For SPARC machines, this means that 32-bit libraries should be placed in the same library directories. 64-bit libraries should be placed in the sparcv9 subdirectory under the appropriate lib directory.

Programs that require versions specific to 32-bit or 64-bit environments are a slightly different case. These should be placed in the appropriate sparcv7 or sparcv9 subdirectory of the directory where they are normally located.

See "Application Naming Conventions".

Packaging Guidelines

Packaging options include creating specific packages for 32-bit and 64-bit applications, or combining the 32-bit and 64-bit versions in a single package. In the case where a single package is created, you should use the subdirectory naming convention for the contents of the package, as described in this chapter.

Application Naming Conventions

Rather than having specific names for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of an application, such as foo32 and foo64, 32-bit and 64-bit applications can be placed in the appropriate platform-specific subdirectory, as explained in "Placement of Libraries and Programs". Wrappers, which are explained in the next section, can then be used to run the correct version of the application. One advantage is that the user does not need to know about the specific 32-bit and 64-bit version, since the correct version executes automatically, depending on the platform.