Bug 1394918

Summary: libswipl.so should be in /usr/lib
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Till Hofmann <thofmann>
Component: plAssignee: Petr Pisar <ppisar>
Status: CLOSED EOL QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
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Version: 26CC: bagnara, mefoster, ppisar
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Last Closed: 2018-05-29 11:32:03 UTC Type: Bug
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Description Till Hofmann 2016-11-14 18:00:33 UTC
Description of problem:
Other applications should be able to link against libswipl. Therefore, libswipl.so should be placed in /usr/lib (or /usr/lib64). Currently, it's placed in /usr/lib64/swipl-%{version}/lib/x86_64-linux/libswipl.so. This means linking against libswipl is not possible (without pkgconfig).

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
pl-0:7.2.3-3

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. ldconfig -v | grep libswipl

Actual results:
No library found.

Expected results:
It should print the library.

Additional info:
Linking with pkgconfig works, but not all applications use pkgconfig, e.g. pyswip ignores pkgconfig.

Comment 1 Petr Pisar 2016-11-15 08:10:07 UTC
The issue is that upstream is strongly against it <http://www.swi-prolog.org/build/guidelines.txt> and applications are advised to use swipl-ld tool for compilation <http://www.swi-prolog.org/pldoc/man?section=plld>. Moreover you still have to locate header files somehow.  Feel free to contact upstream and persuade him about benefits of installing library and header files into Linux standard paths.

Comment 2 Till Hofmann 2016-11-15 09:59:21 UTC
(In reply to Petr Pisar from comment #1)
> The issue is that upstream is strongly against it
> <http://www.swi-prolog.org/build/guidelines.txt> and applications are
> advised to use swipl-ld tool for compilation
> <http://www.swi-prolog.org/pldoc/man?section=plld>. Moreover you still have
> to locate header files somehow.  Feel free to contact upstream and persuade
> him about benefits of installing library and header files into Linux
> standard paths.

Thanks for the links, I didn't know about that. Still, I think their guidelines are well-intended but ill-advised:

"each distribution has established one or more packages for SWI-Prolog independently based on their own conventions"

This is just wrong, there is one well-known location (maybe two if you consider /usr/lib vs /usr/lib64) for shared libraries, and every distribution adheres to it.

Moreover, other distros don't stick to the upstream guidelines either.
Debian:
https://packages.debian.org/jessie/amd64/swi-prolog-nox/filelist
Ubuntu:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/yakkety/amd64/swi-prolog-nox/filelist

This means upstream guidelines are not enforced anyway and only cause what they're trying to avoid, namely libraries in different locations depending on the distro.

I also don't see any advantage. With the lib in /usr/lib/swipl-%{version}, you need to use pkgconfig anyway because of the version in the path. Moving libswipl to /usr/lib doesn't change that. On the other hand, having libswipl in /usr/lib makes dlopen 'just work', no need to add some custom path to the library path. But maybe I'm missing something here.

Finally, the python library *recommended by upstream* doesn't stick to the guidelines either and expects the library to be in the library path.

Comment 3 Petr Pisar 2016-11-15 12:45:40 UTC
You don't have to write it here. Write it to the upstream.

For Fedora it means to develop an maintain pretty invasive patch for upstream build system that upstream never accepts. I will look at it when I have a free time.

You still have to pass a file name to the dlopen(3). The soname changes each major version, so you still needs to pass a value at build time. It's not a big difference whether it's a soname or an absolute path.

Comment 4 Fedora End Of Life 2017-02-28 10:36:56 UTC
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 26 development cycle.
Changing version to '26'.

Comment 5 Fedora End Of Life 2018-05-03 08:20:31 UTC
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Comment 6 Fedora End Of Life 2018-05-29 11:32:03 UTC
Fedora 26 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2018-05-29. Fedora 26
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