How to encode the executable location in a Linux rpath?

Question

I have an executable that implicitly loads several .so libraries, all of them built by me. For deployment, or at least testing/debugging, I'd like to have them all in the same directory:

my_executable
libmylib1.so
libmylib2.so

To get the executable to load the libraries implicitly, I'd like to set an rpath (DT_RUNPATH) for the executable's directory. With OS X, I'd do this like so:

clang -dynamiclib -o libmylib1.dylib -install_name @rpath/libmylib1.dylib src1.c src2.c    
clang -dynamiclib -o libmylib2.dylib -install_name @rpath/libmylib2.dylib src3.c src4.c
clang -o my_executable -L. -llibmylib1.so -llibmylib2.so -Wl,-rpath,@loader_path/. main.c

Notice the @loader_path/. that forms the executable's rpath in OS X. With Linux, the closest I can come to this is

gcc -dynamiclib -o libmylib1.so src1.c src2.c    
gcc -dynamiclib -o libmylib2.so src3.c src4.c
gcc -o my_executable -L. -llibmylib1.so -llibmylib2.so -Wl,-rpath=. main.c

The problem here is that on Linux the rpath follows the current working directory, not the executable's directory. Is there any way of accomplishing the same thing on Linux?

Answer 1

You need to use the literal string $ORIGIN as the runpath, that is understood as the executable's location by the dynamic loader.

Answer 2

A common solution is to create a shell script wrapper that figures out what directory the executable is in and sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH appropriately before execing the actual executable.