krb5 libraries and circular dependencies

[Sam Hartman]

>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Yu <tlyu at MIT.EDU> writes:

    Tom> Nicolas Williams <Nicolas.Williams at oracle.com> writes:
    >> I would definitely not be concerned about loading the wrong
    >> libkrb5.  Distributions can easily ensure that that cannot happen
    >> with the bits they ship, and users should know not to mix and
    >> match plugins built against one libkrb5 with another -- DLL hell
    >> can result if they do.

    Tom> I disagree that we should be unconcerned about that.  I have
    Tom> heard plenty of vitriol from developers and sysadmins who
    Tom> experienced trouble from the Unix/Linux equivalent of DLL hell
    Tom> when installing software that uses plugins.  If the OS vendor
    Tom> or software packager never makes any mistakes, and if the
    Tom> sysadmin never installs a more recent version of some software
    Tom> built from source, then _maybe_ it is possible to ensure that
    Tom> loading the wrong library "cannot happen".

If the krb5 build system didn't use rpath, I think it would be fairly
unlikely that a plugin would get a different libkrb5 than the
application.  However, since rpath is used, I guess it is reasonably
easy to have this happen.

--Sam