From: Bruno Haible <bruno@clisp.org>
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2007 02:07:56 +0000 (+0000)
Subject: Documentation of relocatability for users / installers.
X-Git-Tag: cvs-readonly~951
X-Git-Url: http://erislabs.org.uk/gitweb/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=d1a9de73608716d23da9813779af580d92b4c035;p=gnulib.git

Documentation of relocatability for users / installers.
---

diff --git a/doc/relocatable.texi b/doc/relocatable.texi
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+@node Enabling Relocatability
+@section Enabling Relocatability
+
+It has been a pain for many users of GNU packages for a long time that
+packages are not relocatable.  It means a user cannot copy a program,
+installed by another user on the same machine, to his home directory,
+and have it work correctly (including i18n).  So many users need to go
+through @code{configure; make; make install} with all its
+dependencies, options, and hurdles.
+
+Red Hat, Debian, and similar package systems solve the ``ease of
+installation'' problem, but they hardwire path names, usually to
+@file{/usr} or @file{/usr/local}.  This means that users need root
+privileges to install a binary package, and prevents installing two
+different versions of the same binary package.
+
+A relocatable program can be moved or copied to a different location
+on the filesystem.  It is possible to make symlinks to the installed
+and moved programs, and invoke them through the symlink. It is
+possible to do the same thing with a hard link @emph{only} if the hard
+link file is in the same directory as the real program.
+
+To configure a program to be relocatable, add
+@option{--enable-relocatable} to the @program{configure} command line.
+For reliability, it is best to also give a @option{--prefix} option
+pointing to an otherwise unused (and never used again) directory,
+e.g.@: @option{--prefix=/tmp/inst$$}.  This is recommended because on
+some OSes the executables remember the location of shared libraries
+and prefer them over any other search path.  Therefore, such an
+executable will look for its shared libraries first in the original
+installation directory and only then in the current installation
+directory.
+
+Installation with @option{--enable-relocatable} will not work for
+setuid or setgid executables, because such executables search only
+system library paths for security reasons.
+
+The runtime penalty and size penalty are negligible on GNU/Linux (just
+one system call more when an executable is launched), and small on
+other systems (the wrapper program just sets an environment variable
+and executes the real program).