diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'standalone/linux/README')
| -rw-r--r-- | standalone/linux/README | 23 |
1 files changed, 9 insertions, 14 deletions
diff --git a/standalone/linux/README b/standalone/linux/README index 18983fd7a..2a321845f 100644 --- a/standalone/linux/README +++ b/standalone/linux/README @@ -1,4 +1,5 @@ -You can put this directory into your PATH, and use git-annex the same +You can put this directory into your PATH, or symlink the programs in this +directory to anyplace already in your PATH, and use git-annex the same as if you'd installed it using a package manager. Or, you can use the runshell script in this directory to start a shell @@ -6,20 +7,14 @@ that is configured to use git-annex and the other utilities included in this bundle, including git, gpg, rsync, ssh, etc. This should work on any Linux system of the appropriate architecture. -More or less. There are no external dependencies, except for glibc. -Any recent-ish version of glibc should work (2.13 is ok; so is 2.11). +More or less. How it works: This directory tree contains a lot of libraries and programs -that git-annex needs. But it's not a chroot. Instead, runshell sets PATH -and LD_LIBRARY_PATH to point to the stuff in here. +that git-annex needs. But it's not a chroot. Instead, runshell sets a lot +of environment variables to cause files from here to be used, and a shim +around the binaries arranges for them to be run with the libraries in here. -The glibc libs are not included. Instead, it runs with the host system's -glibc. We trust that glibc's excellent backwards and forward compatability -is good enough to run binaries that were linked for a newer or older -version. Of course, this could fail. Particularly if the binaries try to -use some new glibc feature. But hopefully not. - -Why not bundle glibc too? I've not gotten it to work! The host system's -ld-linux.so will be used for sure, as that's hardcoded into the binaries. -When I tried including libraries from glibc in here, everything segfaulted. +It shouldn't even be dependent on the host system's glibc libraries. +All that's needed is a kernel that supports the glibc included in this +bundle. |