There is one thing I noticed working on my linking collision script. While most of the software properly creates subdirectories to put plugins in, so that they don’t clash with others and it does not pollute the LDPATH space, there are quite a few packages that don’t do that at all and install their plugins straight into the libdir.
Not only that, some packages install static archive versions of their own plugins, with no good reason since they are never linked in statically, but always dlopen’d.
Please don’t pollute LDPATH, if you can, make sure the plugins are installed in “pkglibdir” (that is /usr/lib/packagename) and make sure that they only install the shared object file, and eventually the libtool archive if the software uses libltdl to load them. The static archive is almost always unneeded and just a waste of time.
Also please remember that if you install core libraries in a path outside of the standard libdir (which is very good if the libraries are not to be linked against!), you should probably make sure that there is a proper runpath in the executables. What runpath does is to tell the linker to look for libraries in a path that is otherwise not accessible through the standard configuration files (/etc/ld.so.conf). A common mistake here is to install an env file that makes LDPATH (or even worse LD_LIBRARY_PATH) to the directory where the core internal libraries are installed.
While this works, it does not make much difference than having it in the standard library path: both the runtime linker and the link editor will use the path from the configuration file anyway, so the library is not going to be hidden like you’d want it to for a private library. On the other hand, if just the executable provides their own runpath, then the two linkers will ignore the libraries altogether.
So please, be careful with what you push in the library path, okay?
