[gentoo-dev] libpcre.so.3 - Compatibility with Debian

[James Le Cuirot]

Hello all,

We, like almost everyone else and presumably upstream, install PCRE 8
as libpcre.so.1. Debian, for reasons best known to themselves, install
it as libpcre.so.3. With Ubuntu still being the most widely accepted
"standard" Linux desktop, this presents a problem when dealing with
pre-compiled binaries.

I have been working on a script to replace the rather lacking
steam-games-meta ebuild (see steam-overlay). I'm very excited about
releasing it soon as I think it is a major step forwards in our ability
to easily run Steam without the official Ubuntu-based runtime.

Before I put it out there, I'd like to get Alien Isolation working
properly. It links to libpcre.so.3. Hacking the binary might work but
this isn't ideal and not always an option as some games use Valve's
anti-cheat system, which is ruthless.

I have found that creating a symlink in /usr/lib that points
to /lib/libpcre.so.1 works, except that when you run ldconfig, it
automatically creates another symlink from /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1 to
libpcre.so.3. If you create the first symlink in /lib instead then the
existing /lib/libpcre.so.1 holds after running ldconfig. The latter
location is therefore probably preferable.

Would anyone have any issue with adding this to our libpcre package? I
don't foresee any problems. libpcre.so would obviously still point to
libpcre.so.1. I'm pretty sure there will never be another libpcre.so.3
as upstream have released PCRE2 as libpcre2, effectively an entirely
separate library.

I could create a Steam-specific package for this but that would mean
adding some additional Steam-specific location to ld.so.conf, which I'm
trying to avoid. It would be nice to solve this generally anyway.

Thoughts?

-- 
James Le Cuirot (chewi)
Gentoo Linux Developer