Re: Hard coded paths in csc and relocatable chicken

[Marc Feeley]

> On May 21, 2021, at 8:58 AM, Théo Cavignac <theo.cavignac@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Matt,
> 
> I have been interested in this problem for other reasons, mainly because I 
> was interested in the possibility of installing eggs in userspace while 
> Chicken was installed through distro package manager (thus in root).
> 
> Anyway, in the current states of the compiler it appears that the whole build 
> process of Chicken is built around the assumption of a fixed install path.
> 
> The dust project (https://sr.ht/~evhan/dust/) solved this by putting a 
> placeholder 256 * "X" instead of the path in binaries, then editing the 
> binaries in place when installing in your location.
> 
> I don't know how it would fit in your use case and it is definitely hacky but 
> it works.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Théo
> 

A similar hack that is used by Gambit is to put a long sequence of ./././ etc 
in the paths embedded in the binary and patching the binary when it is 
installed.  The benefit of that approach is that the path in the unpatched 
binary can be the path where the binary is usually installed.

Marc