specifying user-defined absolute run path search directories

[Noresources]

Some months ago, I introduced the runpathdirs API in premake to specify run path search directories (mostly for Makefiles, on macOS and linux)
(previous discussion here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/premake-development/h_jWScfbBb0)

For now, all paths are transformed to be relative to the target output directory. The generated -rpath command use system-specific keywords to tell the linker the path is relative ($ORIGIN on linux, @loader_path on macOS)

I recently found a case where i need to specify an absolute path (the homebrew build of SFML on macOS)

Now, I wonder how I should modify the existing code to allow that.

What do you think about something like

runpathdirs { "a/relative/path", "absolute:/usr/local/brew/lib" }

This will ensure backward compatibility and the keyword+colon prefix syntax is similar to other APIs such as filter

[starkos]

First off, thanks for adding runpathsdir to the documentation wiki, appreciated.

As for the suggestion…that's workable, but kind of ugly. Would it be worth keeping a table of "special" system folders such as `/usr` which are always kept as absolute?

[Noresources]

The credits for the wiki goes to João Matos. If I have something to add to premake later, I promise I will edit the wiki too.

Unfortunately your solution did not work with my current use case. The library I targeted is located in /opt/brew/..<brew internal tree>/lib (not a user dir, but not really a system dir too)
Also, there is no real way to have an extensive list of system paths on linux and macOS, especially for multi-arch linux distros.

I also thought of using a special keyword.

runpathdirs { "%ORIGIN%/../lib", "/absolute/path" }

where %ORIGIN% (or whatever) is replaced by $ORIGIN or @loader_path depending on system and the rest of the path remain as is. But it completely breaks the current behavior. Maybe better for the long term use...