%general-entities; ]> BLFS has more information regarding compilation, /usr vs /usr/local, boot scripts, etc. at . Unlike this book, this would be a chapter in BLFS. A lot of that information has been omitted as this book is more linear and doesn't follow how BLFS follows. However, we will cover some bases here. Building software on GLFS is identical to how it's done in the BLFS books, along with having lib32 compilation instructions. It goes without saying firstmost that you should have MAKEFLAGS set to save yourself a lot of time. This is useful for the make utility to use the amount of threads that you both want and have. export MAKEFLAGS='-jx' Replace x with the amount of threads you have. You can check the amount of threads you have with: grep processor /proc/cpuinfo Make sure that you have enough RAM for your system! A general method is having 2.5G per thread that is thrown at make. For instance, if you want to use 6 threads, multiply 6 by 2.5 (which is 15), then make sure you have 15G of RAM. If you don't have that RAM, try and limit the threads you throw at make. Next is compiling for 32-bit. There are many packages which will have a lib32 counterpart. If you just got done with a normal compilation of a package and wish to do a 32-bit compilation of that same package, make sure to clean the directory first: make distclean Or, if you made a build directory: rm -rf build Then proceed with the 32-bit compilation instructions. Generally, the format of targetting 32-bit goes like this: For ./configure: CC="gcc -m32" CXX="g++ -m32" PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib32/pkgconfig \ ./configure --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib32 \ --host=i686-pc-linux-gnu make make DESTDIR=$PWD/DESTDIR install cp -vr DESTDIR/usr/lib32/* /usr/lib32 rm -rf DESTDIR ldconfig For meson: mkdir -v build cd build CC="gcc -m32" CXX="g++ -m32" PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib32/pkgconfig \ meson setup .. --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib32 ninja DESTDIR=$PWD/DESTDIR ninja install cp -vr DESTDIR/usr/lib32/* /usr/lib32 rm -rf DESTDIR ldconfig For cmake: export CFLAGS="-m32" export CXXFLAGS="-m32" export ASFLAGS="--32" export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/lib32/pkgconfig" mkdir -v build cd build cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr \ -DCMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR=lib32 make make DESTDIR=$PWD/DESTDIR install cp -vr DESTDIR/usr/lib32/* /usr/lib32 rm -rf DESTDIR ldconfig unset CFLAGS CXXFLAGS ASFLAGS PKG_CONFIG_PATH After you do a DESTDIR installation, it is recommended to to use file on one of the libraries in DESTDIR/usr/lib32. An output of such a command for a 32-bit build of a library should be comparable to the following: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked Note the 32-bit LSB shared object part. A 64-bit library would show as a 64-bit LSB shared object.