issue: gnome cannot be relocated w/a symlink

[allbery <allbery+ ece cmu edu>]

Apparently when GNOME packages are installed, they follow symlinks to
determine the real place where they are installed.  This is a problem
when one attempts to make a "dummy-relocateable" GNOME which appears
to live in /opt/gnome, which is really a symlink to somewhere that has 
enough space for it.  (I just performed a hard drive upgrade which was 
the specific reason for doing this; GNOME was on the drive that was
removed, it is now on another drive until I finish rearranging
things.)

I first noticed this when, after rebooting, the panel came up without
any tiles.  I had to go in and repoint it to
/opt/gnome/share/pixmaps/tiles... which it had already expanded into 
the current target of the /opt/gnome symlink when I went to fix the
next tile.  Likewise, other programs that should have been using
/opt/gnome/... paths were instead using the "real" path (and some of
them didn't like it much; aisleriot displayed its "loading" dialog and 
then cored, for example).

So now I have a symlink in the former mountpoint directory pointing to 
the new one.  And programs are already starting to rewrite their paths 
to the new fully-expanded path... which will go away in a week or so.

Why is this happening?  If I build GNOME with --prefix=/opt/gnome, and 
/opt/gnome is a symlink, it should *not* be rewritten to whatever it
points to --- this makes it virtually impossible to relocate GNOME
without rebuilding it.

-- 
brandon s. allbery      [os/2][linux][solaris][japh]     allbery@kf8nh.apk.net
system administrator         [WAY too many hats]           allbery@ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering                                      KF8NH
carnegie mellon university        ["better check the oblivious first" -ke6sls]