Re: [PATCH 5/6] ld.so.8: document $PLATFORM and $LIB expansion

Jonathan Nieder
2011-10-21T05:25:28Z

(-cc: pasky, since I had his address wrong. Goodbye, suse addresses.)
Mike Frysinger wrote:
> On Thursday 20 October 2011 03:15:38 Jonathan Nieder wrote:

>> +.B LIB
>> +The string \fB$LIB\fR (or equivalently \fB${LIB}\fR) represents
>> +the system libraries directory, which is /lib for the native architecture
>> +on FHS compliant GNU/Linux systems.
>
> a better description might be something like "$LIB expands to the short libdir
> name that glibc was configured to install into". and then refer to it usually
> being "/lib" for the native ABI (not architecture) on FHS compliant Linux
> systems. man-pages does not use the "GNU/" noise qualification.

Right, it's $(slibdir), which goes in configparms since autoconf is
not wired to handle the /usr/lib vs /lib distinction. The FHS
describes the contents of /lib as "Essential shared libraries and
kernel modules".

I guess it should say:

$LIB expands to the path to the "essential shared libraries"
directory, which is /lib for the native ABI on FHS compliant
systems.

The FHS is supposed to apply to non-Linux Unix systems too, anyway.

But that leaves me with questions:

- what is $LIB for a non-native ABI?

- does anyone customize this to point somewhere else and make their
machine non-FHS-compliant? Maybe NixOS and Gentoo Prefix do.
What would a person typically use ${LIB} in an rpath for?