Re: removing rpath from libtool

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Michel,

* BRIAND, Michel M wrote on Tue, Oct 30, 2007 at 05:22:02PM CET:
> 
> I would like to know why LD_LIBRARY_PATH is evil.
> 
> Because, here, we have several thousand of applications (!) installed on
> NFS shares that have each :
> - a bin directory
> - a lib directory
> ...
> - an environment file that set up PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH and an alias
> for users to access/use the application.

You just answered your own question, at least partly: if you have
thousands of lib directories listed in LD_LIBRARY_PATH, then each
and every exec of a non-statically-linked program will on average
cause thousands of needless file lookups; just try for example
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/foo1:/foo2:/foo3 strace /bin/ls 2>&1 | grep foo

(on GNU/Linux).  That just trashes performance, more so if all
lookups happen on NFS shares.

There were lots more arguments listed in this thread, and the documents
that were cited.  It's not that LD_LIBRARY_PATH isn't helpful at times,
but it has definite drawbacks.

Cheers,
Ralf