Bug#332753: xlibmesa-gl-dev: cannot link OpenGL app: /usr/bin/ld: cannot find, -lGL

[Sven Joachim <sven_joachim@web.de>]

severity 332753 important
thanks

Andre Heynatz wrote:
> I have read bug report #208198 and am somewhat confused. It has become a combinatorical problem, and my head smokes. But there seems to be an easy way out: libGL.so.1 is linked to different files whether Mesa or nVidia libs are used:
>
> libGL.so.1 -> libGL.so.1.2 (Mesa SW only driver)
> or
> libGL.so.1 -> libGL.so.1.0.7676 (nVidia 76.76 driver)
>
> You create a symlink:
>
> libGL.so -> libGL.so.1.2
>
> which assumes too much. Either it is diverted as well, which adds complexity for every new driver, or:
>
> Simply change the symlink to
>
> ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
> libGL.so -> libGL.so.1
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> This works for both Mesa and nVidia without complex and error prone scripting. I do not know if ldconfig optimizes such symlink chains, but I think startup time is not hampered too much by that. If it were, I would rather file a bug against ldconfig to add optimization there, because having variants is not confined to OpenGL, but result of competition.

Seems logical to me, but I'm definitely no expert in such things.
Maintainers, what do you think?

Meanwhile, I've downgraded the severity of the bug to "important",
because it only affects users of nvidia-glx.