What's the wine "officially recommended way"? for 64bit arch

[szupek]

The stats:

- Wine is a 32bit program, it needs 32bit libraries
- Most users are on 64bit distributions
- Not all wine required 32bit libraries are available in Multiarch or for 64-bit distros
- Package maintainers (for apt-get Ubuntu/Debian) aren't properly maintaining.
--- EX: apt-get install ia32-lib-dev uninstalls gnome and gcc 4.x 64bit

So given all these variables I am curious, with all the changes regarding mutliarch and 64bit / 32 bit, what is wine's recommended approach? Major distro's can't compile wine because previous package maintainers aren't doing their part. Is there any desire for wine/CrossOver to jump into today's technology (64bit) instead of getting the requirements to make app's think it's a 32bit system?

I am not posting this to be trite, I am posting this so fellow readers know what the current state is and where it's going. There is alot of changes going on and package maintainers are becoming more difficult to get a hold of to fix outstanding issues.

[dimesio]

I don't speak "officially" for anyone, but I can give you my take on it as an experienced user and non-developer volunteer.

First: most Windows apps/games are 32 bit, and 32 bit libraries are needed to run them. There is no way around that.

There is no single "officially recommended way" to build 32 bit Wine on a 64 bit distro because how to do that is something that varies by distro. Wine builds perfectly fine on 64 bit distros that have long had multiarch support, such as openSUSE and Fedora. I have never had a problem obtaining distro packages of the 32 bit libraries needed to build Wine on 64 bit openSUSE.

The problems currently being experienced by users of Debian/Ubuntu/derivatives are due to those distros' fairly recent transition to multiarch. From what I've observed here on the forum, some of the problems stem simply from users' lack of familiarity with the new system.

The wiki has instructions for some distros, written by users of those distros. The Ubuntu instructions, AFAIK, are up-to-date; the Debian instructions are unfortunately not. All it needs to correct that situation is for a knowledgeable Debian user to take the time to update them. Anyone can edit the wiki, but no one here can force anyone to do it.

WineHQ does not build or distribute binary packages--only source code. Wine package maintainers are volunteers from the distros, and Wine developers have no control over anything they do, or fail to do.

[szupek]

Thank you for taking the time to respond and post something. I see you continuously making an effort to help and for that... I thank you.