[gentoo-dev] Packaging LSB symlinks for ld-linux.so

[Vlastimil Babka]

Hi,

when trying to bump sci-geosciences/googleearth to a 6 beta version [1], 
there's a problem with missing /lib/ld-lsb.so.3 file, which the binary 
somehow requires, and otherwise fails with a rather cryptic error 
message (saying that the binary itself is missing).
Apparently this is mandated by LSB and some distros provide it in 
packages such as lsb-core (debian/ubuntu), redhat-lsb (fedora) or 
glibc-lsb (mandriva), possibly along with other files. It's always a 
symlink to ld-linux.so.2.

Gentoo only seems to have one lsb-related package (sys-apps/lsb-release) 
which is just some query script.

So, I think the options are:

1) adding the symlink to the googleearth itself
2) adding an extra package for the symlinks
3) adding the symlink to glibc itself
4) working around it somehow

I've tried 4) with no luck (executing "ld-linux.so.2 googleearth-bin", 
trying LD_LIBRARY_PATH overrides, putting ld-lsb.so.3 symlink in the 
same directory as the binary), nothing worked except creating the 
symlink under /lib. If there was a way, it would be easiest for me.

Doing 1) would be easy but rather incorrect and possibly result in 
collisions in the future.

Doing 3) would be a question for glibc maintainers (didn't try yet), but 
I guess they won't like it.

Doing 2) is a question of what package to put it in and what else to put 
there. Frankly, I don't want to study all of LSB to see what's the 
lsb-core/redhat-lsb packages about, just to get googleearth working, if 
there's no general interest in LSB compliance. The mandriva approach 
seems easiest for my needs (it's just the ld symlinks and nothing more). 
But I understand that I shouldn't make such decision myself, so I ask 
here. Thoughs?

Thanks,
Vlastimil


[1] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=348911