On Mon, 1 Jun 2009, Kevin Cowtan wrote:
OK, I understand, RPATH bad.
But as far as I can tell we don't use RPATH. Coot uses LD_LIBRARY_PATH, which
is only set by a wrapper script which launches the actual binary, and so the
use of LD_LIBRARY_PATH is never exposed to the rest of the system (which I
understand is the only problem with LD_LIBRARY_PATH).
Not quite: if your application starts a subprocess and runs something else,
that subprocess will inherit LD_LIBRARY_PATH as set in the wrapper. That
might be fatal for whatever you are running in the subprocess (unless it too
is invoked from a wrapper that overrides/unsets LD_LIBRARY_PATH).
On the whole, I prefer to use rpath, because it makes it easier to harden an
installation against the vagaries of what users have set in their
environment - using an rpath like '$ORIGIN/../lib' to set a path relative to
the location of the ELF can help with installation issues. OS X and Solaris
both allow editing of the runpath inside an executable, so are streets ahead
of Linux here.
Ezra Peisach wrote:
One of the other misfeatures of rpath is that it sets DT_RPATH and not
DT_RUNPATH - which means that LD_LIBRARY_PATH will not override the
That depends on the version of ld - a modern version should set both. Use
'readelf -d' on your executables to check.
Regards,
Peter.
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