How to use apt-get to download multi-arch library?

Is it possible to force apt-get to download a multi-architecture binary of the library I want to install?

Or is apt-get not the right tool for this?

3 Answers

@Tanasis's answer is correct, I have updated it for 2021 (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS) for arm64 and armhf.

1. Add your desired architectures as follows:

   sudo dpkg --add-architecture armhf

   sudo dpkg --add-architecture arm64

2. Create a new .list file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d:

   sudo touch /etc/apt/sources.list.d/arm-cross-compile-sources.list

3. Add the default sources to that list with the architectures (armhf, arm64) prefixed as such:

   deb [arch=armhf,arm64] focal main restricted
   deb [arch=armhf,arm64] focal-updates main restricted
   deb [arch=armhf,arm64] focal universe
   deb [arch=armhf,arm64] focal-updates universe
   deb [arch=armhf,arm64] focal multiverse
   deb [arch=armhf,arm64] focal-updates multiverse
   deb [arch=armhf,arm64] focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse

4. Update /etc/apt/sources.list to include your default architecture (if it doesn't already), otherwise apt will try to use your newly added architectures in those sources which may cause errors as it did with me. Add [arch=amd64] for each line in /etc/apt/sources.list as follows:

   deb [arch=amd64] focal main restricted universe multiverse

5. Run sudo apt update and make sure you get no errors

6. Installing a package with the new architectures should be successful now:

   sudo apt install libasound2-dev:arm64

1

For arm64 I am doing the following on the /etc/apt/sources.list:

Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) example:

I mark all the current (default) repos as [arch=<current_os_arch>], e.g.

deb [arch=amd64] xenial main restricted

And I added the following:

deb [arch=arm64] xenial main restricted
deb [arch=arm64] xenial-updates main restricted
deb [arch=arm64] xenial universe
deb [arch=arm64] xenial-updates universe
deb [arch=arm64] xenial multiverse
deb [arch=arm64] xenial-updates multiverse
deb [arch=arm64] xenial-backports main restricted universe multiverse

Not sure if this is the corrent fix, but at least it seems to be working.

Note: Don't forget to add foreign architecture: dpkg --add-architecture arm64

First to enable multi-arch

dpkg --add-architecture <arch>

Now setup apt-sources to add the new repositories of the new architecture(if you need)

now update your sources.list

sudo apt-get update

Now you can install multi-arch packages via apt-get regularly but you have to specify which architecture you want to download

apt-get install package:architecture

example:

apt-get install gedit:i386

7

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