DrDave wrote: ↑2020/04/02 06:38:59
The 64-bit executable is self extracting, and would appear to be extracting a 32-bit executable. So I need the 32-bit libraries, despite the executable I downloaded from the IBM website is 64-bit. I am surprised IBM did that.
"Installer" and "application" are separate entities.
MS Windows (at least used to) has no package management like Linux distros. Every application has its own installer (and often update service too). A There was no sense to reinvent to wheel, so many companies used same (commercial?) installer. Very popular installer was a 16-bit program. It became unusable with 64-bit Windows that has no 16-bit subsystem.
Commercial applications for Linux tend to follow the same idiom. Either the practice is copied from Windows, company does not want to maintain their product for multiple Linux package managers, or whatnot. You get compressed content and installer that extracts content to some directory. Content and installer can be in one file. The installer does not really have any ties to the content. It just gets a list of files to extract, etc. (To require 32-bit Java to install a 64-bit non-Java program is not my idea of fun.)
Sounds like IBM has updated their tooling to use 64-bit installer for all their applications. The content in your case is some 32-bit application. Something older, that IBM sees no need to recompile as 64-bit? Or perhaps applications targets (used to) have 32-bit subsystem by default?
