Goals

Be path-agnostic. (e.g. untar anywhere and just run.)
Be simple (as much as possible).
Have low requirements.
- Don’t use mounts.
- Don’t use containers, or namespaces, or other similarly overkill approaches.
- Don’t use post install hooks. Be viable on a read-only system.
Bundle everything…
… but be able to support deduplication efforts afterwards (e.g. symlink farms), optionally.
- (which means don’t use static linking.)
Be composable. (One executable made with this strategy should be able to trivially call another executable that was independently made with the same strategy.)

Why?

This de-balkanizes linux.

Without these techniques, binaries on linux cannot be shared between distributions. It creates more work for packagers; and it creates more frustration for users. It means friction; it means wasted time; it means less collaboration; it means linux as a whole is growing more slowly than it could be.

Path-agnostic packaging can be shared. This means easier consumption by users, and less work for packagers. It means we can share, and grow faster together.

Mechanically

tl;dr:

Use rpath $ORIGIN for dynamic library paths (we’ll keep using the ELF format!)
Hooray now you're already path-agnostic