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Date:      Sat, 6 Jan 1996 16:15:31 +0100 (MET)
From:      J Wunsch <j@uriah.heep.sax.de>
To:        kaleb@x.org (Kaleb S. KEITHLEY)
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD hackers)
Subject:   Re: Demand loading (Re: FreeBSD, Zappa & PCI)
Message-ID:  <199601061515.QAA14865@uriah.heep.sax.de>
In-Reply-To: <9601061436.AA06441@cambridge.x.org> from "Kaleb S. KEITHLEY" at Jan 6, 96 09:36:46 am

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As Kaleb S. KEITHLEY wrote:
> 
> > >  I'd also be keen to get rid of ldconfig 
> > > and ld.so.cache.
> > 
> > Why?
> > 
> > I've been missing them on SysV.  (For configuration purposes, let the
> > possible performance gain from a shorter lookup time alone.)
> > 
> 
> In SVR4 (or Digital Unix nee OSF/1) you set the RPATH in the executable
> to dictate where to look for shared libs if the shared libs aren't in the
> "usual" place; completely obviating the need for ldconfig and ld.so.cache. 
> Packages put the libraries where ever they want, the program knows where 
> to find them. You don't need hints like ldconfig and ld.so.cache.

Who puts the RPATH into the executable?  At least, simply linking it
e.g. against an X11 library with ld doesn't put it there.  In my case,
it was an application that has been linked against some X11 libs but
that is regularly started via inetd, so there wasn't an easy way for
tweaking the environment.  The latter is not the normal way to go
anyway, think of setuid binaries.  My only solution was to symlink the
X cruft into /usr/lib.  Not very exciting.

What about binaries where i want to shuffle the shared libs around
later?  (E.g., they are linked against Motif, and i'd like to keep my
copy of Motif in a separate subtree?)

You haven't convinced me yet that the SysV solution is better than
ld.so.hints.  No, i'm not defending BSD since it's just BSD, but
ldconfig used to be one of the tools i love in BSD.  It gives the
administrator a fine-grain control about the location of shared
libraries, without fiddling with the environment.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)



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