November 2009 Archives

Last week, Mike Ash wrote a post describing the different install name keywords recognized by the Mac OS X dynamic linker: @executable_path, @loader_path, and @rpath. I wanted to chime in with a bit of advice: if at all possible use @rpath.

This gist is, if you’re targeting 10.5 or later, use @rpath. There’s no reason I can think of to still use @loader_path. If you’re still on 10.4, use @loader_path. And let’s hope that you’re still not targeting 10.3 and earlier, so forget that @executable_path ever existed. There’s really never a good reason to use @executable_path on 10.4 and later.