For an interesting use of RPATH headers to make portable Linux binaries (and shared libraries) have a look at this script that I used to build Python 2.7.2 and

For an interesting use of RPATH headers to make portable Linux binaries (and shared libraries) have a look at this script that I used to build Python 2.7.2 and a whole pile of 3rd party libraries https://github.com/wavetossed/pybuild https://github.com/wavetossed/pybuild I think that things like RPATH and LD_PRELOAD are exactly what shared libraries should be doing. The reason for shared libraries in the modern age, is increased flexibility.