Re: [HACKERS] dynamic libraries

On Mon, 12 Oct 1998, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Just to comment. If we use -R or -rpath, people need to use that for
> _every_ application that uses libpq, etc. That seems like a pain to me.

The alternative is more painful. If PostgreSQL were the only application
package installed on a system your LD_LIBRARY_PATH would be really short.

> B1ecause people have not had problems in the past using ld.so.conf, and I
> can see them having problems with -R or -rpath, I would hesistate to
> change it, though I can see why some installations would prefer the
> -R/-rpath.

I'll continue to ignore the fact that some ELF systems do have a
bastardized runtime linker and use ld.so.conf when I state that ELF
systems have no ld.so.conf, so its LD_LIBRARY_PATH or -R/--rpath (I looked
up the flag finally.)

ld.so.conf or ldconfig with various directories on the command line is
necessary for a non-ELF system; this is the way you do things. ELF fixes
this (the problem is when you have a zillion different directories to
search for libraries in and it starts taking a long time to start
dynamically linked programs on a loaded system. I'll assume everyoen sees
the security problems with a system wide library path.) So for a.out or
other non-ELF systems, I'm proposing no change; do whatever works. For
ELF, the specification supports compiled in library search paths; lets use
them. Asking the system administrator to keep track of another library
path is most assuming. -R/--rpath also makes it simpler for non-root
users to install PostgreSQL.

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