Yes, it is backward. Since 10.5 OSX has @rpath that more resembles Linux rpath however. I am not an expert in OSX but had to do some fiddling when porting some library. This is what I figured out, if libA.dylib depends on @rpath/libB.dylib (shown in otool -L) then you can use install_name_tool to add_rpath of @loader_path/. which should make the path relative to libA.dylib.