Re: Multiple -rpaths

[Jan Engelhardt]

On Monday 2008-11-03 22:59, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
>* Ralf Wildenhues wrote on Mon, Nov 03, 2008 at 09:14:31AM CET:
>> * Jan Engelhardt wrote on Mon, Nov 03, 2008 at 07:39:56AM CET:
>> > Is not that what libtool is supposed to cover up? Maybe not for every
>> > make invocation à la `make LD=zzzld`, but perhaps determining the
>> > type of ld at configure-time.
>> 
>> But it *DOES* cover up.  Just use -R.  Reread my post, please, the last
>> paragraph speaks about a special case that you may or may not need to
>> use.
>
>Maybe I answered your question only half way here:
>
>For dependencies on libraries that are not libtool libraries (i.e., no
>.la file exists), libtool cannot automatically add a run path.  Why not?
>Well, libtool cannot know whether the library to be linked against is
>installed or uninstalled.  If it is installed, it cannot know whether
>that is the final location of the library, or a DESTDIR path.  So
>blindly adding the directory of that library would break some uses.
>
>That's one reason why you are encouraged to _not_ remove installed .la
>files.

Thank you for providing this explanation. Keeping the .la does the
right thing, and I am happy :)

So I guess the reasons why distros remove the .la files is because
they are within the default search paths.