Cannot force rpath about patchelf

[speleo3]

I just ran into the same issue. The behavior of --force-rpath feels very random. I would expect that the flag doesn't depend at all on the previous values of RUNPATH or RPATH, namely:

• without --force-rpath: modified file has RUNPATH
• with --force-rpath: modified file has RPATH

But instead, I get this:

patchelf --remove-rpath
patchelf --set-rpath foo
  RUNPATH              foo
patchelf --force-rpath --set-rpath foo
  RUNPATH              foo                        <-- unexpected (expect RPATH)
patchelf --force-rpath --set-rpath bar
  RUNPATH              bar                        <-- unexpected (expect RPATH)
patchelf --remove-rpath
patchelf --force-rpath --set-rpath foo
  RPATH                foo
patchelf --set-rpath foo
  RPATH                foo                        <-- unexpected (expect RUNPATH)
patchelf --set-rpath bar
  RUNPATH              bar

The outcome is only predictable after --remove-rpath.

Output generated with this script:

#!/bin/bash
doit() {
    echo patchelf $*
    filename=libm.so.6
    patchelf $* $filename
    objdump -x $filename | grep PATH
}
doit --remove-rpath
doit --set-rpath foo
doit --force-rpath --set-rpath foo
doit --force-rpath --set-rpath bar
doit --remove-rpath
doit --force-rpath --set-rpath foo
doit --set-rpath foo
doit --set-rpath bar