Re: package managers [was: FatELF patches...]

From: Mikulas Patocka
Date: Wed Nov 04 2009 - 19:05:30 EST


> Walking $PATH is even worse - if it finds a /usr/local/bin/ld, it's a pretty
> damned good guess that it's there *because* it's not the /bin/ld that the
> system shipped with. So why should it use it?

If it finds /usr/local/bin/ld it's because the admin installed it there
--- and he installed it there because he wants it to be used. So it's OK
to use it.

Anyway, if you have both /usr/bin/ld and /usr/local/bin/ld, you are in a
pretty unpleasant situation because different programs search for them in
a different order and you never know which one will be used. (i.e. what if
./configure scripts prepends /usr/local/bin to $PATH ... or if it prepends
/usr/bin? who knows - no one can check all ./configure scripts. These
scripts do crazy things just because it worked around some flaw on some
ancient Unix system).

Mikulas
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