Remove Need For Environment Variables? about nix-ld

[Mic92]

I would actually not go down this route for the following reasons:

1. I don't think this would give you all the libraries needed. More complex executables often load own libraries that bring in more dependencies. In which case nix-ld would need to re-implement all of the library search and load mechanism of glibc in a bug compatible way.

2. It might also significantly slow-down. As it now spawns nix-index on every executable and than download the packages, which could be for some use cases quite slow and require unexpected network access.

3. Also the linked package in nix-index could be outdated or even in incorrect. When using nix-index I often see unrelated electron applications that vendor a certain library and come in the search index before the actual library. So without implementing a ranking this would suddenly turn into a lottery what is going to be downloaded & executed.

That's why I think having a configuration file (could be even locked up in the current or parent folders instead of a fixed path), would be a better approach. Than people could use arbitrary automation to find the right libraries, that than can be cached and does not lead to surprises and hard to debug behavior.

[alexhulbert]

Ah I see. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for your quick response.