[clue-tech] Libraries, run-time linking, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and ld.so.conf

[Jed S. Baer]

The upgrade to FC4 was nearly painless. However, I've run smack into a
problem which I ran into a while back when attemptiing to upgrade just
Mozilla and Galeon. For whatever reasons (parameters set by the guy who
built the Galeon RPM I used?) Galeon 2.x doesn't know about
/usr/lib/mozilla... library files, and so will fail, complaining that it
can't find libgtkembedmoz. The short workaround is to invoke it thusly:

  LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/mozilla-1.7.8 galeon

or, put symbolic links in /usr/lib to the so files in
/usr/lib/mozila{version} (obviously, the above command line needs correct
versioning as well, when things chage).

I also tried, without success, to put Mozilla's lib directory into the
default search path by creating a mozilla file in /etc/ld.so.conf.d/ and
then running ldconfig. I guess I misunderstand the workings of ld.so.conf
and ldconfig. Not surprising, considered my limited experience with
developing dynamically linked software under Linux.

Googling for LD_LIBRARY_PATH brings up pages and pages of instructions
saying things such as "to get package foo to run, tweak your
LD_LIBRARY_PATH ...".  Likewise, googling for ld.so.conf hasn't gotten me
any useful pages either.

What I'm after is, if possible, a way to get Mozilla's libs into the
library search path which doesn't feel like a kludge, and will work
gracefully with future updates. Now that might be asking a lot,
particularly if the problem is in the way that Galeon interacts with
Mozilla, and/or how those packaging RPMs for Galeon do their builds. (I
note that the Galeon website says 2.0.1 "Works with Mozilla 1.7.5+", but
the RPM wanted Mozilla 1.7.12 specifically -- I installed it --nodeps, and
it's fine, provided the libraries are resolved).

I think a lot of what I used to know about LD_LIBRARY_PATH is now obsolete
anyway, since by default, I don't even have it as an environment variable,
and it seems to me I used to. Also, I recall that in the past I had to
specify the whole path when setting it (by using things such as
$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/new/path), otherwise lots of stuff wouldn't be found,
but that doesn't seem to be the case any longer.

So, I'm looking for some suggestions as to how best to make Galeon and
Mozilla play nice together, without making too many ugly things on my
system. And, some linkage to a good, current, explanation (other than web
pages which simply reproduce man pages) of runtime loading, and how that
interacts with ldconfig.

TIA
jed
-- 
http://s88369986.onlinehome.us/freedomsight/
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... it is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday
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