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Re: Why is "setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH very bad"?
From: |
Bob Friesenhahn |
Subject: |
Re: Why is "setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH very bad"? |
Date: |
Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:41:19 -0500 (CDT) |
On Wed, 24 Oct 2007, Tom Treadway wrote:
Hi,
I've seen very frequent references to "LD_LIBRARY_PATH bad".
Is there a reference that summaries this badness?
LD_LIBRARY_PATH is not always bad. It has valid uses and is useful in
controlled situations. Imposing management of LD_LIBRARY_PATH on the
user of your software is evil. However, if you provide a wrapper
script which hides this detail from the user then it is much less
evil.
In times past I have observed a very evil problem with LD_LIBRARY_PATH
in which the user required several different 3rd party applications,
each of which used a somewhat different version of the same shared
library. Applications would end up using the wrong shared library and
either fail due to a missing symbol, or crash. Once again, providing
a shell script wrapper which sets up LD_LIBRARY_PATH for only your
application helps considerably to avoid such conflicts.
Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/