Build i386 Debian packages within an amd64 system

I just quickly explain how I build Debian packages for i386 architecture on my amd64 system, using cowbuilder.

Creating base image:
Just run:

cowbuilder --create --debootstrapopts --arch --debootstrapopts i386 --basepath /var/cache/pbuilder/base-sid_i386.cow

Building packages:
You need to add the following setting in your pbuilder configuration (ie. usually ~/.pbuilderrc):

PDEBUILD_PBUILDER="cowbuilder --build --basepath /var/cache/pbuilder/base-sid_i386.cow"

Just like with another architecture.

The major difference is that you will need to build your packages using:

pdebuild --use-pdebuild-internal

You can also use svn-buildpackage, adjusting your ~/.svn-buildpackage.conf as follows:

svn-builder=pdebuild --use-pdebuild-internal

Note that the source packages will have to be signed manually as debsign does not seem to try and sign the right files (it seems it looks for _amd64.changes).