Re: Windows and DLLs

[luther maxime u-strasbg fr]

On Wed, Sep 30, 1998 at 07:10:47PM -0500, Wesley Felter wrote:
> > Basically ld, the dynamic linker, has a configuration file that
> > tells it where
> > to find libraries.  These directories contain the actual
> > libraries and symlinks
> > to the newest version.  The actual library is the .so file, i'm
> > not sure what .a
> > and .la files are.  By adding files to ld.so.conf or
> > LD_LIBRARY_PATH you can put
> > new directories into your library path, like /usr/local/lib or ~/my_libs.
> >
> > Make sense?
> 
> Yes, although it doesn't answer my question. I think it's OK that libraries
> have to go in certain directories, because most shared libraries will be
> preinstalled (and it probably wouldn't be too terrible if applications
> statically linked every non-preinstalled library (I'm assuming that GNOME
> will be preinstalled by most distros)).

you can execute every executable if you give the absolute or relative path to it.

that is if in the directory /home/joe/myfiles/thisdir there is a file this.is.an.executable, you can launch it either by :

/home/joe/myfiles/thisdir/this.is.an.executable
or by :

cd /home/joe/myfiles/thisdir
./this.is.an.executable
the reason why you can not type just :
this.is.an.executable
is a security question, you could just specify . as directory in your PATH variable and you will be able to do this, but in a multiuser system, someone could make an ls executable that do some strange thing you don't like and then do the ls. or other such nasty things.

remember that unix system have been arround since forever, and are very mature in this kind of thing.

for example i am working on a solaris box, but i don't like the installed tools, so i just prepended $HOME/bin to the PATH variable, added $HOME/man to MANPATH, and defined $HOME/lib in LD_LIBRARY_PATH or something similar, and now i am using all my preefered self compiled tools withtout breaking things for other users.

this is a command line example, but it should work just as well under some fancy gui like gnome.

note: solaris even automount CDs, are we able to do this with CDs, or removable disks on Linux/gnome ?

Friendly,

Sven LUTHER