%general-entities; ]> Perl In multilib builds we install compilers and libraries for each available architecture. The description below says that perl installs several hundred libraries, but they are used by invoking perl, not by linking to them with ld. Although it is possible to install perl for 32 bits, move it to a different name, and then install the 64-bit version, it is almost always invoked as just perl. That means only the libraries and modules for the last version installed will be accessible. We therefore only install one version. Perl does not, by default, know about library directories with names other than lib, such as lib64. The following patch will allow it to install to lib64. patch -Np1 -i ../&perl-multilib-patch; There is a further (possibly cosmetic) anomaly - if we install perl and then run perl -V it will claim that libc is in /lib. The following patch fixes this, but only takes effect when make install is run. patch -Np1 -i ../&perl-lib64-patch; We still need to tell perl to actually use lib64 echo 'installstyle="lib64/perl5"' >>hints/linux.sh ./configure.gnu --prefix=/usr -Dpager="/bin/less -isR" \ -Dlibpth="/usr/local/lib64 /lib64 /usr/lib64" \ -Dcc="gcc ${BUILD64}" -Dlibpth="/usr/local/lib64 /lib64 /usr/lib64" This tells Perl to link against the 64-bit libraries.