Kylix for Delphi programmers - Library load order

Library and package loading is done by the dlopen() function. When dlopen() is passed an unqualified file name, it looks for it in one of three groups of places.

1. Any of the directories in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. LD_LIBRARY_PATH is a colon-separated list of directory names, just like the PATH variable. (For security reasons, programs running as root (that is, either being run by root or a setuid program owned by root) ignore LD_LIBRARY_PATH.)
2. The libraries listed in /etc/ld.so.conf. More accurately, dlopen() looks in /etc/ld.so.cache, which is compiled from /etc/ld.so.cache by the ldconfig program, usually at boot time. Files that you add to a directory in /etc/ld.so.conf, or directories that you add to /etc/ld.so.conf wont be seen by dlopen() until you run ldconfig.
3. /lib, then /usr/lib.

Any match stops the search: ie, if dlopen() finds the library in a LD_LIBRARY_PATH directory, it wont look in /etc/ld.so.conf or /usr/lib. Similarly, if dlopen() finds the library in the first LD_LIBRARY_PATH, it wont look in the second or third LD_LIBRARY_PATH directory.