Static linking considered harmful

[John Reiser]

Jakub Jelinek wrote:
> If you want bit-reproduceable results, you can equally well
> just stick the shared libraries you need into the same directory as the
> program and run it as
> ./ld-linux*.so.2 --library-path . ./the_numerical_program arguments
> it will cost you just a few extra lines in the Makefile, IMHO not a big
> deal.

Yes, the primary outputs will be the same.  But the total user interface
will be different.  The process name (revealed by ps, top, etc.) will be
ld-linux*.so.2 instead of the_numerical_program.  So existing scripts
that monitor (or get out of the way of) the_numerical_program won't find it;
killall won't work; oprofile will group all such programs together
as ld-linux instead of as separate numerical programs, etc.  This
"other stuff" is important to users and administrators.

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