How common is this technique for loading libraries? How about in the kind of POSIX tools that are available, but not exclusive to, on mac os (sucha as bash, termux, vim, git, apache etc)?
(glibc and some other core libs like openssl like to detect plugins by probing the paths for libs and only loading them when necessary)
I would have thought that even if Apple did make this change they could trap the fopen or whatever and return something useful based on a heuristic? It wouldn't be the first time that they put exceptions and heuristics in for software compatibility.
You're opening yourself up to a lot of race conditions otherwise, and this has been the source of many security vulnerabilities
Check it... for what?
Are you currently checking files are there before you dlopen them? How do you avoid a race between the stat and the dlopen? What happens if the file is removed between them? Seems broken and you shouldn't be doing this in the first place.
System libraries (depending how Apple defines that)? Unusual.