static libraries

Alexey Pushkin alexey.pushkin at mererand.com
Fri Feb 20 18:25:35 UTC 2009


Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 07:04:23PM +0300, Alexey Pushkin wrote:
>> Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>>> The general Fedora policy is to package up dynamic libraries in
>>> preference to static libraries, and this is the policy we have
>>> pursued.  You'll have to take up any issues with Fedora (good luck!)
>> Windows is different from Linux and IMHO the reasoning
>> behind this policy is not applicable to Mingw stuff.
> 
> Perhaps it is different, but this is something that has to be
> discussed with Fedora, FPC and FESCO.  Remember to take along your
> flameproof suit.

Well, I'm not really associated with Fedora in any way...
Just a happy Fedora+Mingw user :-)

> I'm not convinced anyway: First of all I think there _is_ a security
> issue, for example with the few executables that we do distribute.
> Secondly the virt people need DLLs and aren't really interested in
> doing the work for static linking, since we would never use it.

Sure, in many cases one would want dynamic linking.

But many developers would prefer static versions.

Because, with dynamic linking they'll anyway end up installing
private copies of all the dlls  together with the executable
somewhere under Program_Files/MySuperApp/bin.
Which
(a) defeats the purpose of dynamic linking
(b) increases total file size
(c) complicates installation
and at the same time doesn't bring any benefits.

And for people like me, who also need to distribute their own DLLs,
dynamic linking is simply a non-solution.



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