Re: [gpsd-dev] RPATH tangle

[David Spencer]

Hi folks,

You're missing a major use case completely: the build-from-source
distributions -- Gentoo, Slackware, Arch, LFS.  In this case it's the
packager's job to deliver a reliable means of having the end user
build gpsd cleanly and repeatably.  For this use case, adding a
preachy moany nannying message about installing chrpath when
chrpath=no would be even more inappropriate than requiring chrpath
itself.  The end user would see it and go, WTF?

If chrpath is helpful for your sandboxes when developing gpsd, great,
please continue to use it and have it supported in your scons scripts.
 However, from the packager's point of view, it's good to have the
option to be able to run some quick basic sanity tests on the final
proper packaged installation in (for example) /usr.  For that, the
absence of RPATH is a necessity.  Testing the object files in the
build tree is neither necessary nor sufficient.  This applies to the
source-based and the binary-based distros alike.

Just give us the option of not running tests and not requiring
chrpath.  Whether that's the default or not is irrelevant; it's our
job as packagers to select the right set of options, whether they're
defaults or not.  Please don't overthink it and change all the options
just before every new release.  Nobody wants that.

Thanks for listening and thanks for caring,
-Dave Spencer (packager for SlackBuilds.org)