Re: [RFC/PATCH] python: search parent lib directory for libnotmuch.so

[Jed Brown <jed@59A2.org>]

Justus Winter <4winter@informatik.uni-hamburg.de> writes:
> But why do we do that? I always thought that rpath causes more
> problems and is to be avoided if possible [0]. But otoh, I didn't even
> knew that the notmuch build system uses rpath.
>
> 0: e.g. http://wiki.debian.org/RpathIssue

RPATH is bad for distributions, but great for private installs.

> I actually have no strong feelings for or against this proposal. I'm
> merely surprised that there is an issue that you are trying to fix
> here since exactly this configuration has worked for me since the day
> I started using notmuch.

Sure, but you always set LD_LIBRARY_PATH instead of relying on RPATH.

> And from my point of view LD_LIBRARY_PATH is the correct way to
> instruct the dynamic linker (and as a similar facility the ctypes
> library loader) where to look for additional libraries.

LD_LIBRARY_PATH is inconvenient as hell if you have multiple installs
living in different places, i.e., you write /path/to/A/bin/notmuch and
have it use /path/to/B/lib/libnotmuch.so.3 just because you placed
/path/to/B/lib in your LD_LIBRARY_PATH at some point in the distant past
when it was needed by /path/to/B/bin/other-thing that may not even be
installed any more.

This happens a lot more with languages other than C and when you have
different compilers with mutually-incompatible ABIs or packages that
didn't bother with soname versioning.