Hi Alex and all:

 > But it seems people want to remove it "eventually" ...
 > in a couple of centuries ...

Deprecation, in my understanding, requires a realistic
roadmap for change, and in particular there must be
a way to replace any legitimate use of the old facility
by a functionally equivalent new construct.

 > if you have the intention of using it in new software,
 > or keeping it in existing software, maybe you could
 > give your reasons

In addition to what Joseph wrote:

 > ... useful as it always was for testing purposes ...

We are using RPATH not only in testing, but also in
deployment, namely in binary installers where we
bundle our application's binary executable with
all direct and indirect shared library dependencies,
except the most basic system libraries.

 > would you mind sending a patch, and CC binutils

I'll try tomorrow.

Kind greetings, Joachim