Re: Linking setup with gnustep-make 2.0.1 on Solaris

[Fabian Groffen]

On 12-06-2007 15:08:54 +0100, Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:
>> I'm not sure why the GNUstep developers chose for this approach.  I'd
>> like to know if the GNUstep developers have an interest for changing
>> this or not.
>
> Use of -R is generally considered a really bad idea for any software where 
> you don't tightly control the deployment environment, because it hard-codes 
> filesystem locations into the binary, and the libraries you want to use may 
> well not be in the same location on the target machine that they are in on 
> the build machine.

I'm not sure if we talk about the same thing.  Using runpath directions
is a very common thing for programs.  libtool for instance is
specialised in that.

> So -R generally only makes sense for people who are packaging distributions 
> where the location of everything is fixed.

Like us :)

But out of curiosity, what is for you a valid scenario of moving
binaries around (in an ELF system) and still expecting them to work?
On OSX we know, but there you use "relative paths", something you can do
with $ORIGIN on ELF systems, but again, moving dynamic binaries feels
like a bad thing on ELF systems to me.

> That being said, it would be nice to have an option in gnustep-make to let 
> people (who are targeting a very specific setup) turn on the use of -R 
> without having to modify their makefiles.
> eg. 'make relocatable=no'

That would be cool, yes.

Thanks,

-- 
Fabian Groffen
Gentoo on a different level