RPATH problems in kdelibs

[Thiago Macieira]

Alexander Neundorf wrote:
>Rationale: without any RPATH the libs get the RPATH from the executable
>(AFAIK). This means when running an uninstalled executable, it will link
> to the correct uninstalled libs. When the executable gets installed, it
> is relinked to the installed versions.

I don't think you should make a difference there. Just apply the same 
behaviour for both executables and libraries.

Besides, why should the executable's RPATH have to contain a library's 
library dependency path? What happens if you relink the library, and its 
dependency changed paths -- but you haven't relinked the executable yet?

(Note that I am arguing for --as-needed too)

>Are kdewidget and maybe the styles, i.e. stuff which is loaded by Qt,
> the only problems ?

No. All plugins are. Anything that can be loaded can -- potentially -- be 
loaded by a non-KDE program. In which case, the libraries aren't yet in 
memory and must be found by RPATH.

>This is no issue on OS X where there is install_name_tool which has the
> same effect but works blazingly fast.

Technically, changing the ELF header to change the RPATH should be fairly 
simple... I just don't know of a tool to do that.

>There is a tool called chrpath (http://freshmeat.net/projects/chrpath/)
> which can edit the RPATH in ELF files, the only problem is that it
> can't add an RPATH if there's no RPATH yet in the ELF file, and the new
> RPATH may not be longer than the already existing RPATH. Having
> something like that for ELF files would be really nice.

That's the same as using khexedit. I meant a real tool that understood 
what ELF is -- probably using libelf.

I'll look into that myself.

-- 
  Thiago Macieira  -  thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
    PGP/GPG: 0x6EF45358; fingerprint:
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