Re: Stale files in /usr/X11/bin ?

[Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Mar 26, 2005 at 05:37:08PM +0200, Yury Tarasievich wrote:
> Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> >Do you want to link directly against lib.so instead of lib.so.x? That's
> >broken.
> 
> Yes, that's what I'd want to do. Shame it's broken.

It is broken because the soname has a reason. Libraries with identical
sonames are supposed to be backward-compatible with regard to the
implemented ABI.

> >Exactly. The dynamic linker doesn't care at all about version numbers.
> 
> I'm out of my depth here, but what is, then, when binary has inside it 
> references to lib...so.<n>?

The linker does an exact match. That's why it doesn't care of versions.

> >Not really. The libc.so --> libc.so.4 link is used by the _static_ linker,
> >You could use varsyms to change the behaviour on a per-case base.
> 
> Sorry, I don't really know what the varsym is.

varsym(8). Bascially it's variable expansion for symlinks :)
You have to set vfs.varsym_enable=1 though. Someone wants to add
that to the manpage?

Joerg