+
+Building 32-bit DPDK on 64-bit Systems
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+To build a 32-bit copy of DPDK on a 64-bit OS,
+the ``-m32`` flag should be passed to the compiler and linker
+to force the generation of 32-bit objects and binaries.
+This can be done either by setting ``CFLAGS`` and ``LDFLAGS`` in the environment,
+or by passing the value to meson using ``-Dc_args=-m32`` and ``-Dc_link_args=-m32``.
+For correctly identifying and using any dependency packages,
+the ``pkg-config`` tool must also be configured
+to look in the appropriate directory for .pc files for 32-bit libraries.
+This is done by setting ``PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR`` to the appropriate path.
+
+The following meson command can be used on RHEL/Fedora systems to configure a 32-bit build,
+assuming the relevant 32-bit development packages, such as a 32-bit libc, are installed::
+
+ PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR=/usr/lib/pkgconfig \
+ meson -Dc_args='-m32' -Dc_link_args='-m32' build
+
+For Debian/Ubuntu systems, the equivalent command is::
+
+ PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/pkgconfig \
+ meson -Dc_args='-m32' -Dc_link_args='-m32' build
+
+Once the build directory has been configured,
+DPDK can be compiled using ``ninja`` as described above.
+
+