Re: LD_LIBRARY_PATH troubles

[Steven Barker]

On Wed, Mar 13, 2002 at 06:44:40PM +0100, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:

> > > We will have to resolve the libraries-in-non-standard-places some day one
> > > way or another, check the list archive of debian-hurd for details on how
> > > that is possible.

> The other possibility is to install X with the empty prefix (so that all X
> libs end up in /lib).  This is what we should do anyway, requries some
> support in the Debian packaging, though.  I inquired Branden about it, but
> never received a reply.

I also had some discussion with him about it (see wishlist Bug #114625).

I also investigated what would be needed to make a /X11R6 -> . symlink
work.  The current problem is that there are several symlinks of the form
/usr/foo -> /usr/X11R6/foo that are shipped in the X packages (for example,
/usr/lib/X11 -> /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 is in xfree86-common), and the install
scripts break when they don't exist.  There doesn't seem to be any
minimal workaround to fix that (without the risk of leaving some systems
with fubar links).

I worked for a while at changing all the X packages to create the
problematic symlinks in their postinst scripts, if needed (as checked
by using by readlink(1) from debianutils), rather than ship them
in the deb package.  I never got far enough to have anything really
testable, but I might be able to dig up some of the hacks I was trying
if anyone's interested in them.

Another possiblility is to wait for after woody releases and lobby for
complete abandonment of the /usr/X11R6 hierarchy in Debian. Brandon's
not opposed to it, and current policy forbids any package going in
there (with an exception for ones built with Imake which puts things
in the same location as X, and would only need a recompile to be fixed
after a change).

I suppose a third, and perhaps the most hurdish possibility would be to
use shadowfs to make the /X11R6 hierarchy appear to be on top of the
stuff in / ....

-- 
Steven Barker                                      scbarker@uiuc.edu
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