On Thu, 27 Oct 2005, Geert Hendrickx wrote:

> > It is deprecated, but a very importantly supported feature.  There are
> > reasons to set it, not the least of which is to test libraries in
> > non-installed state (libtool, among others, depends on this ability).
>
> Could this possibly enable us to build libraries and dependant packages in
> a subdir != ${PREFIX}, without actually installing anything?

Among other things, yes.  This is similar to how multiple interdependent
shlibs in the same source tree work.  If you need to run an in-tree
application that depends on those libraries as part of the build, you need a
way to get at those shlibs without installing them to the final rpath.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>