[SOLVED] Is it possible to assign a second "/" directory, as you would other environment variables such as PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc?

Issue

I'm using Linux Mint for this example.

As an example, I've extracted geany and href="https://packages.ubuntu.com/eoan/geany-common" rel="nofollow noreferrer">geany-common into a folder using dpkg-deb. I attempt to run it:

cd ~/Packages/geany/usr/bin
./geany

I'm given the error:

(geany:9716): Geany-ERROR **: 07:02:33.815: Cannot create user-interface: Failed to open file “/usr/share/geany/geany.glade”: No such file or directory

The program is looking for the (hardcoded?) location /usr/share/geany, which I don't have because I unpacked a .deb file. Obviously using a package installer/building from source/directly copying the files would fix this, but that's not what I'm trying to do.

Is it possible assign a second "/" to ~/Packages/geany/ so when Geany runs, it assumes that both "/" and "~/Packages/geany/" are the root of the filesystem and finds the files it needs?

Solution

One way is to do an overlay mount via OverlayFS (tutorial). I'm not sure if you can overlay / itself, but you can probably overlay /usr & friends.

Another thing to try, without adding a second root directory, is to dockerize geany.

Answered By - root

Answer Checked By - Terry (WPSolving Volunteer)