Re: The load path

[Greg Troxel]

  I don't think I fully understand what's behind
  the lib vs. shared split.  (If shared is really shared, for example,
  how does it work that both <installation in $prefix/lib> and
  <installation in $prefix/shared> are 1:1 with <make install>?)

Per the 4.4BSD conventions, from which the notion of /usr/share arose,
things in /usr/share must be architecture independent.  So no
executables, no shlibs, just text files and binary files that have the
same representation on all architectures.

On any machine, with make install, it's fine to put the appropriate
bits in both.  A symlink in /usr/share pointing to /usr/lib is ok too,
becaues the symlink is architecture-independent.  With this, one can
mount /usr from an arch-dependent place, and /usr/share from an
architecture-independent place.  This doesn't get used much, except
perhaps that for os installation sets the 'share' set can be the same
for all archs.

  I'm
  inclined to argue that this is a further motivation for saying that
  the arguments to the configure option should be complete additional
  directories, not prefixes. :-)

Sure, and I concur.

-- 
        Greg Troxel <address@hidden>