[Qt-interest] Linux Deployment using rpath and $ORIGIN

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 12/12/2010 06:18 PM, Thiago Macieira wrote:
> On Sunday, 12 de December de 2010 15:18:42 Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>> On 12/12/2010 10:58 AM, Thiago Macieira wrote:
>>> On Sunday, 12 de December de 2010 01:57:31 Joshua Grauman wrote:
>>>> Ahh, makes sense. When you say isn't supported in all systems, do you
>>>> mean not supported in all X11 systems (ie. HPUX, etc.), or do you mean
>>>> not even supported in all Linux systems? Do you know if it is supported
>>>> by most Linux systems? Thanks!
>>>
>>> Not even all Linux systems. uClibc-based systems do not support $ORIGIN.
>>
>> If you care about uClibc systems.  Most people don't (who on earth uses
>> that anyway), so $ORIGIN is actually a very nice solution.
>
> Well, a lot of people. In fact, most Linux users of Qt are addressing the
> embedded market, where uClibc is very, very common.
>
> There are only a few embedded / mobile systems running Linux that have glibc.

I don't think that one would follow the practices described by the OP 
anyway when deploying on embedded devices, since those tend to have 
their own, specialized environments for deploying binaries.

So I was kinda assuming the OP means normal PC/Desktop/Workstation 
systems where $ORIGIN is actually used often.  Since that means 
x86-compatible machines, your distributed binary package wouldn't work 
anyway anywhere else than x86.  So the problem is not the non-support of 
$ORIGIN, but that the binaries run on x86 Linux and won't work on many 
of the embedded stuff.  And even on x86 embedded devices, you probably 
require special packaging anyway.

So to make the above short: $ORIGIN is an extremely helpful feature and 
one shouldn't be afraid to use it on x86 Linux PCs. I mean, that's why 
it's there for :)