Static linking considered harmful

[Axel Thimm]

On Fri, Nov 24, 2006 at 02:21:09PM -0600, Chris Adams wrote:
> Once upon a time, Axel Thimm <Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net> said:
> > FWIW again from the number crunching community, sometimes statically
> > linking numerical libs shows performance gains (although when the
> > problem domain is of that kind the libs tend to be headers-only with
> > inlining), and some only commercial available libs only offer static
> > libs.
> 
> Not all the number crunching community statically links.  For example,
> my father works for NASA, and for his project, they rebuild from source
> everywhere.  This is a requirement since they run the project on a
> number of platforms (Linux, Solaris, Windows/Cygwin, Tru64, IRIX).

You faile dot mention whether your father builds his apps statically
or dynamically. Any either way, this distribution model is indeed
Gentoo-like as someone else mentioned in this thread.

> > Which brings yet another argument in favour of not disallowing
> > statically builds: ISVs love to use these in order to have one build
> > for the whole Linux world.
> 
> Unless these vendors include object code suitable for re-linking against
> a different glibc, they are violating the LGPL if they link against
> glibc.

Are you sure? glibc is not GPL, it's LGPL. and how would a vendor in
2006 be able to ensure that his binaries can relinked with glibc from
2010?
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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