Re: Still more problems on the way

[Mark H Weaver]

Detlev Zundel <address@hidden> writes:
> It is indeed, but nobody ran ldconfig after installation of the
> libraries.  Doing that manually allows me to execute the hello world
> example, hurray!  How should this have happened automatically?

When you install pre-compiled libraries from a distribution's binary
package, the package manager runs "ldconfig" automatically.  When you
run "make install" from upstream source code, it is _your_
responsibility to run "ldconfig".

You might ask why "make install" does not run "ldconfig" automatically.

There are a few reasons.  First of all, non-root users must be able to
run "make install".  In this case, they can't run "ldconfig", but there
are other ways for programs to find their shared libraries, e.g. by the
LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable (though this is slower), or by
embedding an "rpath" into programs that use the library.

More commonly, when modern distributions build their binary packages,
they run "make install" as part of the build process (typically as a
non-root user) installing into a temporary directory which is then
archived to the binary package.  This would obviously be the wrong time
to run "ldconfig".  Instead, it must be run when the binary package is
installed, and this is handled by the package manager and not by "make
install".

     Best,
      Mark