From a fresh sid chroot: Install multiarch glibc install build-deps get the source look at debian/rules put dh_link and dh_installdirs above dh_installchangelogs and dh_installdocs Add to the configure line: --includedir=/usr/$(DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE)/include --libdir=/usr/$(DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE)/lib Add -common packages to control, the old lib packages should be depending on the -common package. Splitting the packages: create libpackage.links with the line: usr/share/doc/libpackage-common usr/share/doc/libpackage Move common files (examples, docs, m4, etc) to -common.{examples,install,...} And on the files containing those paths (lib* ?): perl -pi -e 's;^debian/tmp/usr/include;debian/tmp/usr/i386-linux/include;' perl -pi -e 's;^debian/tmp/usr/lib;debian/tmp/usr/i386-linux/lib;'