-static packages

[Matt McCutchen]

On Wed, 2010-09-15 at 17:06 +0100, Robert Spanton wrote:
> I've recently had to link a fair amount of my work statically so that
> it'll run on a cluster of RHEL machines.  Unfortunately, I am just a
> user of these machines, and so I don't have the power to get them to run
> Fedora or even to get the admins to install RHEL packages in a timely
> manner.  Building statically also helps me to eliminate as many of the
> inevitable fractional differences between cluster nodes as possible, to
> achieve reproducible results from simulation runs.
> 
> However, only a few packages in Fedora provide -static variants.  This
> has meant that I've had to locally build these, which is obviously not
> desirable from a maintenance perspective.
> 
> So, would be acceptable to register requests for -static package
> variants as tickets on bugzilla?  Or is there a better way to try to
> encourage people to generate these packages?

I think the answer is "no": Fedora wishes to discourage static linking.

You can continue to build your own -static packages, or you can install
the libraries you need manually in your home directory (which probabably
isn't any easier, but gives you the other benefits of dynamic linking),
or you could set up a QEMU or User Mode Linux VM and install whatever
you like.

Ideally, we would have a packaging tool that works for per-user software
collections as well as the system.  That's something I plan to work on
in the next few years.

-- 
Matt