pkgsrc on 64bit Linux (Was: Pkgsrc on linux, defective by design ?)

[David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

Back in may Youssef gave a workaround for using pkgsrc on a 64 bit linux box:

> >> Hello pkgsrc users,
> >>      Appending of -L/usr/lib64 will alwas lead to linking against
> >> native libs when they are present on the system which not always
> >> desired.
> >
> > I had exactly the same problem on every 64bit version of Linux I used.
>
> As a workaround, you can comment lines 349 and 350 in
> pkgsrc/mk/buildlink3/bsd.buildlink3.mk.
> ...
> #BUILDLINK_INCDIRS.${_pkg_}?=   include
> #BUILDLINK_LIBDIRS.${_pkg_}?=   lib${LIBABISUFFIX}
> ...
>
> This will prevent the -L/usr/lib64 and -I /usr/include from beeing appended.
> I'm not aware of any other clean way of doing :(

I just had cause to build munin on a 64bit RedHat ES 5 box, and hit
the same problem (my symptom was pango had a missing lib on the link
line, and patching that resulted in a pango which could not find
fonts).

I understand that making those lines conditional on "!64bit Linux" may
not be a perfect solution, and we may still run into issues with
packages explicitly setting /usr/lib64, but I suspect that pkgsrc is
going to be significantly less broken on those platforms with that
change.

Is there a better way to address this? Or is the choice between
marking the platform PKG_FAIL_REASON to stop people wasting their time
trying to use it or putting in the workaround and requiring additional
patches for some packages?