What is "rpath"

rpath is a term in programming which refers to a run-time search path hard-coded in an executable file or library, used during dynamic linking to find the libraries the executable or library requires.

Specifically it encodes a path to shared libraries into the header of an executable (or another shared library). This RPATH header value (so named in the Executable and Linkable Format header standards) may either override or supplement the system default dynamic linking search paths.

The rpath of an executable or shared library is an optional entry in the .dynamic section of the ELF executable or shared libraries, with the type DT_RPATH, called the DT_RPATH attribute. It can be stored there at link time by the linker. Tools such as chrpath and patchelf can create or modify the entry later.