basedir spec and plugins

[Thiago Macieira]

Thiago Macieira wrote:
>>Also note that we're talking about desktop use here.  That's the 'D' in
>>XDG.  Who is going to have HPUX running on IA64 as a desktop machine
>> AND want to do something ridiculous like have two copies of the same
>> app installed, compiled with different C++ ABIs?
>
>Well, then think of Solaris, where KDE does run on. And it can be
> compiled with both Sun CC and GCC. And they are binary incompatible.
>
>Interestingly, in the HP-UXi on IA-64 case, the ABI is technically the
>same because that's the platform where GCC's current C++ ABI comes from:
>the Itanium C++ ABI. The HP C++ compiler uses it too. Of course, the
>problem still applies because the standard C++ libraries are different.

Let's face it: we're not going to solve the C++, ABI and base libraries 
issue. The more I think about it, the more I see we'd open a can of worms 
by trying to.

And don't get me started on Windows, where Microsoft breaks full BC with 
every new Service Pack of their compiler. Let's say Windows users 
willingly put themselves at the mercy of Microsoft, so we won't try to 
solve there either.

Also, no self-respecting dynamic linker will load binaries that are for a 
different word size or endianness. And the OS ABI wouldn't be a problem if 
it were checked consistently -- it isn't. I've just checked that the Linux 
ELF loader and it doesn't verify the OSABI, even though libdl does.

Finally, the dynamic loader already tries to find libraries in sub-paths. 
The only problem is that dlopen doesn't apply this technique if there's a 
slash in the library name.

So either we use an arch-os combination like multiarch proposes, or we can 
reuse LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

-- 
  Thiago Macieira  -  thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
    PGP/GPG: 0x6EF45358; fingerprint:
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