Re: removing rpath from libtool

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Wed, 24 Oct 2007, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:

> > I really don't see the need for rpath at all, maybe it makes sense on
> > other systems, but we are on Linux & Solaris.
>
> Well, if I install a shared library in /opt/foo-package/lib and link a
> program against it without an rpath, how will the runtime linker find
> it otherwise?  Setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH is very bad, for many reasons.

Solaris provides the 'crle' command, and Linux provides the 'ldconfig' 
command for formally configuring the run-time linker search path so 
that evil LD_LIBRARY_PATH and rpath are not required on that system. 
Root access is required in order to use these utilities.

It can not be safely assumed that a non-default configured path will 
be in the run-time linker search path on some other similar system.

I have seen a --disable-rpath option provided by some packages (or 
--enable-rpath) and maybe libtool should support it.  If the user 
disables rpath, then it is then up to the user to try to make the 
program work.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/