From: <[email protected]> on behalf of Elizabeth Fischer <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [easybuild] next EasyBuild conf call: Wed Jan 6th 2016, 5pm CET
> As far as I know, LD_LIBRARY_PATH is considered evil: > http://xahlee.info/UnixResource_dir/_/ldpath.html > > I agree, using RPATH avoids a lot of evil. From the EasyBuild perspective, > that is really needed to achieve the kind of compiler flexibility people want. Totally agree with this one -- you REALLY want to set your compilers up to set RPATHs to their runtime environment. Do the EB-built compilers currently do this? > The goal would be for EasyBuild modules to NOT set LD_LIBRARY_PATH at all, to > have it all be done via RPATH. Since Spack already does this, EasyBuild would > do well to copy the feature. Or people could just use Spack :). We generate modules but do not presuppose them to exist. I think it's a good policy. > If one is successful in avoiding LD_LIBRARY_PATH (an excellent goal), then > RPATH and RUNPATH are equilalent. In that case, maybe RUNPATH would be a good > idea --- it would allow the user to override RUNPATH by setting > LD_LIBRARY_PATH in special cases; for example, to temporarily test things with > a different version of a library. Unless you have total control over your users' environments, you can't avoid LD_LIBRARY_PATH. They can set it, and all sorts of webpages and software guides encourage people to set it. This is why we like RPATH at LLNL -- we can override the users, and even if they meander into a directory without loading a module, they can still run everything. -Todd
