Why use rpath

There are different reasons why search directories additional to the builtin ones can be needed - a user may install a library privately into his home directory, e. Unlike other UNIXes, the Darwin linker, dyld , locates dependent dynamic libraries using the full path to each dylib. For example, in an executable "foo", the full paths recorded are the install names for each dependent dylib.

This dependency can be seen with otool -L foo. These properties are initialized from a set of global CMake variables with the respective name. There is not something like the one "correct" RPATH set up, it depends on the wishes of the developer or distribution policies. Different RPATH settings may be required when running a program from the build tree and when running it from its install location. If the program links to shared libraries which have been also built in the same project, then the RPATH needs to point to the directories in the build tree when running the executable from the build tree, and it must not point to the build tree anymore once the executable has been installed.

Unfortunately there is no easy and fast way to change the RPATH of an existing executable or shared library. Since version 2. It will be enabled for both the build tree and install tree. Before CMake 2. Since all the entries in. All the ELF software should ignore the.

I considered porting this myself, but I have no direct need for it; if you develop proprietary software for Linux, or need this feature for deployment, though, you can contact me for a quote on implementing it. Or you can do it yourself or find someone else.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Leave a Reply Cancel reply. It was passed to the linker not the compiler. The value of the parameter may be an absolute path or multiple paths to a directory, e. At runtime, dyld uses the runpath when searching for dynamic libraries whose load path begins with rpath.

We don't know yet. To solve that, we need to learn about possible rpath for the binary. Now we can substitute rpath with the found path and verify why the file is missing. I've said the rpath is part of the binary and is set during the compilation process linking phase with a given value of the parameters. However, if we need to modify the rpath manually, e. We just mastered dynamic linking problem-solving. The meaning of the Embedded Binaries section from the Xcode is clear:.