> > > 1. I see no mention on rpath in the policy manual (grepping through all the > > > .html files) yet lintian issues a warning about it. I'm asking because I'm > > > packaging something that uses rpath heavily. > > > rpath hardcodes an item's location. If this item later moves, everything using > > it gets confused. rpath is generally frowned upon. > > rpath adds additional path elements to the search list. Libraries are > still found in the standard directories.
The issue with rpath came up during the migration from libc5 to libc6. Since the X librarys (primarily) had to be relinked, the old libc5-based ones were moved. However, since many X programs were linked with -rpath, they still looked FIRST in the old location, where the new libc6-based librarys were. This caused many things to break nastily.
