Re: Debian's -rpath policy [was: What hack in ld.so?]
On Tue, Feb 02, 1999 at 09:55:23PM +1100, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 01, 1999 at 09:08:59PM +0100, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> > Gordon Matzigkeits message. Debian has done a (not so) small mistake in the
> > libc5->libc6 transition, and it is our responsibility to fix it.
>
> I'm sorry, but I don't see how our solution is a mistake. It works;
> it seems reasonably clean, too.
Mmmh. Have you read the whole thread?
All binaries compiled with rpath + libc5, which suck in other libraries like
X, do not work on a Debian system.
Thus, we broke (almost) completely backward compatibility with non-Debian
non-libc6 binaries, because for most third party software, rpath is standard.
This affects binaries compiled in the past or in the future. For example,
vncviewer by ORL was compiled with rpath, libc5, and does not run on a
Debian system.
Our mistake was to replace libraries with a dependency on libc5 with
libraries depending on libc6 with the same soname. (Read this sentence
again, it is important). Therefore, we replaced an existing, used library,
by a new and incompatible version. Therefore, we broke use of rpath. Debian
was not affected, because we don't use rpath, and have a hack in the linker
(see below), but users of non-Debian software on Debian are affected.
The linker can cope with it (when rpath is not specified), by special casing
libc, libm and one other library. This is not what I call "reasonable
clean", but YMMV. The hack in the linker does not reach far enough, as it
does not special case libraries sucked in via rpath. RedHats linker does, so
RH is not suffering from Debians rpath syndrome. (Ian posted the patch, we
should probably apply it).
The whole rpath mess is _our_ fault, not the fault of libtool or something
else. When do we reckognize this, apologize to the libtool maintainer and
fix the real problem?
Marcus
--
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