forestalling GNU incompatibility - proposal for binary relative dynamic linking

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Edward Peschko <esp5@pge.com> writes:

> I was told that the two projects were basically almost 'joined at the hip'; 
> that in order to make changes in one, that you often needed to make 
> changes in the other.

That is an exaggeration.  In fact, gcc and glibc routinely change
without affecting the other.

> So, going back to my original point, is this true? In order to make 
> LD_LIBRARY_PATH rpath aware, would the changes be localized in glibc, 
> or would hooks be needed in binutils and in gcc? What work would be
> involved?

As I understood your original proposal, it involved changing how the
dynamic linker interprets LD_LIBRARY_PATH.  That change would be to
the dynamic linker, which is part of glibc.  No change to gcc would be
required at all.

If such a change is adopted into glibc, then there is a part of the
program linker which also looks at LD_LIBRARY_PATH and should probably
also be changed.  This is not a very important part of the linker,
though, and mainly exists to give better warnings.  The linker is, of
course, part of the binutils, not part of gcc.

Ian