Re: gcc, specs, and rethinking the sidai -R thing

[Daniel H. <ha...@li...>]

 > [Recap: "my" [vague] proposal was: lose the -R stuff, have some extra
 > ARK gunk to "manage" the ld.config game (where to find .so files).]

    Not paying attention to any of the sidai stuff (where the
constraints are very different), developers that do *not* understand
the use of RPATH and expect that I either use LD_LIBRARY_PATH or
change the system library path Just Don't Get It and are up there on
the "#!@% me off" list.


    The point of -R is for when you're building objects into non
standard locations, which if I remember correctly, sounds like what
you do.  Your specific case is mitigated somewhat in that you're
building the whole system, but only somewhat.

    The system library path is the system library path for exactly
that;  certain unpleasant corners cases are generally vetted by way of
"we promise we won't do this to you" (LD_LIBRARY_PATH has the same
problems where you're taking the promise on yourself).

    What happens when my application has a libfoobar.so that includes
a definition of printf?  We haven't even started on the fun corner
cases the appear when we introduce dlopen into the picture.

    printf is obviously an extreme example, but the point is that I've
actually lived through doing linking the wrong way.  ELF brought us
RPATH and taught us to use it for a reason.  The previous methods
don't work, and in some cases, people notice.