Running patchelf on a symlink creates a new file, removes symlink, leaves original unchanged

[quanah]

If you have a library file that's actually a symlink, and use patchelf on the symlink, patchelf fails to update the actual file, and instead removes the symlink and creates a new file with the updated rpath in place of the symlink. It appears there either needs to be a --follow-symlink option, or a --no-symlink option, and the default behavior is to either follow or not follow the symlink.

[jyp]

This issue is blocking https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/20794

What can I do to help?