Re: Why does solib_open do what it does?

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@mvista.com>]

On Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 11:41:02AM -0700, Michael Snyder wrote:
> You don't think that gdb should honor LD_LIBRARY_PATH in native
> debugging, if it is set?  Won't the linker-loader honor it?
> 
> I'd be ready to agree that, if solib-search-path is set,
> it should override LD_LIBRARY_PATH.  But if it isn't set...

As far as I'm concerned, the linker should always set the absolute
pathname, and we shouldn't be doing any of this junk.  I had to
reimplement ELF search order a few months ago.  It's considerably more
complex then what we do here - DT_RPATH for example.

> >In fact, for remote debugging, leaving these checks in is rather
> >dangerous.  If, for some reason, the shared lib is not found via
> >either solib-absolute-prefix or solib-search-path, we don't want
> >to search paths on the host file system which refer to the hosts
> >libraries.   If the file is found via one of these paths, it is
> >almost certainly wrong, and I've seen cases where this can cause
> >wildly unpredictable behavior.  (E.g, segfaults on the target, or
> >breakpoints being hit at strange places.)
> 
> Agreed.  Indeed, I think LD_LIBRARY_PATH is required for native,
> and always wrong for cross.  Is there any way we can use that
> distinction?  Maybe with a configure variable?

No.  Please take a look at PR gdb/633 and the discussion there.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
MontaVista Software                         Debian GNU/Linux Developer