[M3devel] $ORIGIN?

[Jay K]

So I can build a distribution FreeBSD 4.11...


But it looks like FreeBSD didn't support $ORIGIN until very recently: 8.0.


This is evidenced from two places:


http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.0R/relnotes-detailed.html
  indicates it is new


and http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi lets you specify version.
The ld-elf.so manpage doesn't mention it until 8.0.


This means, something like:
  FreeBSD users using < 8.0 will need/want to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
  I don't think the distributed binaries have any hardcoded paths in them, except for the $ORIGIN stuff,
   which I think will just be ignored. "Normally" they do, but the distribution build specifically
   tries to omit them.


This "puts pressure" on considering "this problem" more/again?
  NetBSD < 5.0, FreeBSD < 8.0 ... enough to do something about?
  I've been looking into autoconf and libtool some, but i haven't yet, like..
  what I'd like to see very clearly is them do the "relink before install" behavior.
  Once confirmed to be there.. maybe our "binary" packages are a bunch of .o files?
  Interesting compromise?
  Or, really, maybe we somewhat give up on "relocatability" and hardcode /usr/local/cm3?
     I realize, official Debian packages need to be at /usr.
  Anyone building from source, can put the files anywhere.
  We can also only "give up" on FreeBSD and/or NetBSD -- where $ORIGIN is more recent introduction.


I also seem to recall OSF/1 supports arbitrary environment variables, but doesn't define anything for you like $ORIGIN.
Some system is that way.
For that can invent custom names and wrapper scripts perhaps.


I know, a likely question, it has been asked for, "what is common?" i.e. portable, works the same "everywhere"?
  That would be hardcoded paths, no relocatability.
$ORIGIN is very common, but less so.


I'm the one who opened this can of worms here.
 The previous -rpath was a mess with lots of directories. That could at least be changed to something short.
  $ORIGIN is indeed very promising and fairly portable, but not perfectly portable nor perfectly "behaved".
  I don't think any solution is perfectly "behaved", there are contradictory goals.


 - Jay