Is there a way to set the elf NEEDED field at link time?

Question

Given a executable such that:

>objdump -x someprog | grep c++
NEEDED               libstdc++.so.6

I want to change the requirement to the fu

Answer 1

I think I have answered my problem though not the question I actually asked.

RPATH is searched before LD_LIBRARY_PATH. The reason /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6 is being picked up rather than libstdc++.so.6.0.22 is that there is no symbolic link from /where/i/installed/libstdc++.so.6 to /where/i/installed/libstdc++.so.6.0.22

So the rule is follow the standards for your platform (where they are sensible). In this case: Whenever you install a shared library install the expected links as well.

I think the actual question I asked is still interesting technically so I will still accept a better answer to that if anyone has one (even years later).