[geeks] libtool AGAIN, grrrr

[Dave McGuire]

On December 13, David Passmore wrote:
> Any package I write which uses libtool explicitly copies the contents of
> .libs (which is where the static and shared versions of the object live,
> including the stub file <foo>.la) to a known location via make install.
> 
> The environment variable LTDL_LIBRARY_PATH controls where the binary looks
> for these objects upon dlopen(). All of my packages have this variable
> explicitly set in the startup scripts. 
> 
> This is very simple to do. If a package uses libtool and does not explicitly
> set this variable in a startup script, hardcode it in the binary, or
> recommend that you set it yourself in a README, is broken.
> 
> I wouldn't feel so strongly about this, but libtool is an amazing tool, and
> it works very well. The requirements for specifying where to locate shared
> objects are spelled out explicitly in the documentation. It is very simple.
> Complain to the package maintainer.

  Cool deal Dave, thanks for the explanation.  I will whine to the MySQL
people.  I've found mailing list references to this problem dating
back nearly two years on many platforms.  It's unbelievable that
they've still not bothered to fix it.  Of course, as Geoff Adams says,
"I'm sure it works fine under Linux."  *grumble*

     -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
St. Petersburg, FL