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Date:      Mon, 3 May 1999 01:37:03 +0200
From:      Bjoern Fischer <bfischer@Techfak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE>
To:        "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com>
Cc:        cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG, John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com>
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/libexec/rtld-elf rtld.c
Message-ID:  <19990503013703.A280@broccoli.no-support.loc>
In-Reply-To: <372BE410.87C7D5C7@newsguy.com>; from Daniel C. Sobral on Sun, May 02, 1999 at 02:35:12PM %2B0900
References:  <XFMail.990501105137.jdp@polstra.com> <372BE410.87C7D5C7@newsguy.com>

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On Sun, May 02, 1999 at 02:35:12PM +0900, Daniel C. Sobral wrote:
> John Polstra wrote:
> >=20
> > What do you think?  In your opinion (totally unbiased, of course),
> > does this argument hold water?
>=20
> John, remember the initial complain message? "I have used X, Y and
> Z, and I *hated* the way .RPATH worked."

Moment, please. I have to set this right.
First of all Solaris violates the spec, too: First LD_LIBRARY_PATH,
then RPATH. I have seen this weird search order (RPATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH)
*only* in DEC OSF/1 and IRIX up till now. I complained about it and was
told: "It conforms to the ELF spec." -- Oh.

> Need I say more? Well, I will, just in case. :-) There is very
> little that could be worse than breaking a standard that *is* used
> by other Unixes. You initial suggestion would add a variable used
> only by FreeBSD, yes, and it would *MAINTAIN COMPATIBILITY* not only
> with the standard, but with other OSes. Think how much people will
> hate you if you try to reverse the search path. :-)

Oh no, we de-reverse it. The search path in the spec is reversed. ;-)
Anyway, what do you think one has to change? If there's some .RPATH in
the dynamic section, the maintainer seems to know what he's doing and
he won't use LD_LIBRARY_PATH, but for hacking and testing. If not it
won't hurt at all.

Could you sketch an example for a situation that demonstrates the
usefulness of a RPATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH search order?

All Unices (including FreeBSD) that use ELF added non-standard
enhancements to the spec. Therefore incompatibility is just there.
The ELF spec is neither complete nor fully worked out. E.g. library
versioning is not covered at all: Every manufactor invented his own
wheel. We can't maintain compatibility to other OSes here, since
every manufactor interpretes the ELF spec individually.=20

There is very little that could be worse than breaking a standard:
Following that standard blindly because two other Unices do.

  Bj=F6rn

--=20
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
GCS d--(+) s++: a- C+++(-) UB++++OSI++++$ P+++(-) L+++(--) !E W- N+ o>+
K- !w !O !M !V  PS++  PE-  PGP++  t+++  !5 X++ tv- b+++ D++ G e+ h-- y+=20
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------


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