Re: --prefix and -R path

[Russ Allbery]

Bob Friesenhahn <address@hidden> writes:

> When Sun introduced LD_LIBRARY_PATH in its operating systems (later
> adopted by Linux) it was described as a tool for use by developers
> rather than end-users.  For Solaris, I prefer -R, but Linux and FreeBSD
> users will likely prefer to do without.  They may use some other means
> (e.g. ldconfig or LD_LIBRARY_PATH) to configure the library search path.

Linux users can and do use LD_RUN_PATH and -R just like Solaris users, but
most distributions just install everything in paths that ldconfig knows
about.

As far as I'm concerned, no one anywhere ever should use LD_LIBRARY_PATH
except as a hack for broken vendor applications that one cannot relink; it
causes no end of problems, overrides built-in search paths in different
ways on different platforms, and is horribly confusing to try to explain
to end-users.  The advantage of -R or LD_RUN_PATH is that all the
complexity is born by the person building the software, who tends to know
more what they're doing, and the users don't have to worry about it.

We teach all of our users to never set LD_LIBRARY_PATH unless they're
running something like Oracle that just has to have it set.

-- 
Russ Allbery (address@hidden)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>