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Date:      Fri, 11 Jul 1997 19:20:18 +0200
From:      Stefan Esser <se@FreeBSD.ORG>
To:        "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Cc:        current@FreeBSD.ORG, hans@brandinnovators.com
Subject:   Re: Heads up and and a call for a show of hands.
Message-ID:  <19970711192018.19125@mi.uni-koeln.de>
In-Reply-To: <1011.868634163@time.cdrom.com>; from Jordan K. Hubbard on Fri, Jul 11, 1997 at 08:16:03AM -0700
References:  <1011.868634163@time.cdrom.com>

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On Jul 11, "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> wrote:
> 	Should /etc/ld.so.conf be an _override_ or an _add on_ to
> 	the "detected" ldconfig path list?

Are comments allowed in /etc/ld.so.conf ?
Assuming you ignore lines starting with a hash character,
you could use "#keep" to preserve the old list, and make 
the upgrade procedure (which messes around with /etc/rc.*
anyway) merge the currently found rc.conf default into 
the place of that comment, which will trigger the override
behaviour ...

> Making it an override is certainly the more flexible of the two
> options since you could conceivably use it to avoid /usr/lib
> altogether and set the system up to use your custom library locations.

Yes, and I guess this is useful for a number of situations.
But then, you could in such a case just modify the startup
code to check for "/etc/rc.ld.prune" and start with a clean
path in that case. Somebody needing /usr/lib taken out of 
the library path will surely be able to modify the scripts
in /etc accordingly ...

> On the other hand, making it an override also means that the minute
> you "buy in" to /etc/ld.so.conf, you have to buy in all the way.  An
> automated installation can't simply create ld.so.conf and start
> appending custom paths to it, it has to first detect that it's not
> there on a user's system and populate it with a sensible initial path,
> the most up-to-date value for "sensible" being pretty much whatever's
> auto-detected by default in the no-etc-ld.so.conf clause of /etc/rc.

Well, and that's what I think can be reached by having the 
"#keep" comment as the only entry of "/etc/rc.ld.conf" by 
default, and to postpone actually moving the path there to
some later time, were the file munging happens anyway.

> That fact tends to suggest that you'd also sort of like to keep the
> bit of rc which currently builds up _LDC and just selectively add
> /etc/ld.so.conf to the _end_ of this list for the localizations.  This
> would also put the file far more our of the critical path and make its
> introduction less of a shock (at the cost, of course, of being able to
> use it for overriding anything).
> 
> What do folks here think?  Right now the behavior is "override", but
> since we're not using it yet, it's still a reasonable time to change
> that if necessary. :-)

Override is the better long term solution. But as you say,
we need a smooth path leading there ...

Regards, STefan



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