On Sat, 10 Jun 2000, Matthew R. Sprague wrote:
> I wasn't very clear here in what I was trying to get across. The qt
> difference that I was talking about was where RH and Mandrake are putting the
> qt2 files
> RH --->/usr/lib/qt2.1.1
> Mandrake---->/usr/lib/qt2
> Maybe I'm over reacting but from the end user point of veiw this is a pain in
> the butt. Does this not cause a problem if a someone using Mandrake decides
> to grab binary RPM's made by bero for RH and install them?
No, this does *not* cause a problem for *binary* RPM's. Binary programs
linked against a library have no idea where the library is stored in the
filesystem, nor do they care. If "libqt2" shows up in "ldconfig -p", any
binary that uses qt2 will have no problem, regardless of whether it was
built in a system where QTDIR was /usr/lib/qt2, /usr/local/lib/qt, or
/home/bob/extralibs/qt. This makes no difference at all to compiled
programs.
> This is was I
> meant by a good example of the pressing need for a linux standard base.
> Mandrake claims 99.5(?)% compatability with RH but right now as it stands
> won't this lead to potential conflicts?
Not in binary RPM's.
> This is not KDE's fault directly,
> but you might want to suggest that Mandrake and RH agree on a common library
> directory. It is a tiny difference but it is the kind of thing that can leave
> a sour taste in the mouths of new users. The other option is that there is no
> problem and I'm pulling my hair out over something that has a solution
> allready built in to Mandrake.
The solution is already built into all Linux distributions. The run-time
linker doesn't depend on hard coded pathnames to find libraries, it looks
through a list of directories specified by (IIRC) /etc/ld.so.conf. If
different distributions want to put libraries in different locations (like,
say, /usr/pkg/lib, ala *BSD), this causes no problems.
> If I'm correct in the directory naming conflict then isn't the following a
> problem?
> http://www.kde.org/kde1-and-kde2.html
> #!/bin/sh
> export KDEDIR=/opt/kde2
> export QTDIR=/usr/lib/qt-2.1.1 (does this need to be changed to
> /usr/lib/qt2 for a Mandrake distribution?)
> export PATH=$KDEDIR/bin:$PATH
> export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$KDEDIR/lib:$QTDIR/lib
Now, something like that *is* a problem. But this only affects source
code. New users aren't likely to be compiling their own programs.
Anyone who's reached the level of maturity with an OS to be compiling
their own programs isn't going to have a problem with editing Makefiles
and scripts to change the location of QTDIR.
