In article <200503240048.TAA03267@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>,
der Mouse  <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> wrote:
>> Why is the "-L" options not sufficient?  Why is an extra "-R" option
>> pointing to the same directory needed?
>
>Because the people who designed the NetBSD shared-library
>infrastructure decided to support unusual configurations such as
>linking against libraries that aren't where they will end up at run
>time (which is a good thing) and decided to provide this flexibility in
>a way that complicated, not simplified, the common case (which is a bad
>thing).

This complexity is necessary, and we did not design it. It is part of
the ELF standard.

christos