[Pkg-ia32-libs-maintainers] ia32-lib plans and security support for same

[Mike Hommey]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 02:46:09AM +0200, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> FTP-master asked me on irc to get permission from you (debian-security)
> for splitting up ia32-libs into multiple source packages before going
> any further.
> 
> The ia32-libs package provides 32bit i486 legacy support for amd64 and
> ia64 so that users can run software that is only available in
> 32bit. Among others this includes rar, wine, acrobat reader, mplayer
> with windows dlls (sometimes you still need those), wine, google
> earth, skipe, znes. According to popcon 94% of the amd64/ia64 users
> have ia32-libs installed so the demand for 32bit support is still
> high.
> 
> We, the ia32-libs team, plan to split up ia32-libs into multiple
> source packages because it has become too big to keep track of it all.
(...)

I'm going to ask a very stupid question, I'm sure, but why can't these
be generated from the corresponding packages sources instead of having
an ia32 source package as well?

Mike