Static linking considered harmful

[Axel Thimm]

On Mon, Nov 27, 2006 at 05:48:54AM -0600, Callum Lerwick wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-11-24 at 19:52 +0100, Axel Thimm wrote:
> > And please note that the target group we're talking about are simple
> > users (even though they may be very skillful programmers), not some
> > package monkeys that will create rpms and debs for all systems
> > required or that even care about DSO, tarballing their runtime
> > enviroment and scripting launchers and so on (just quoting some
> > solutions offered in this thread).

> Shipping a dynamically compiled app in a single tarball capable of
> running on multiple distributions is quite possible. It works for Linden
> Lab, and Google Earth is shipped in a similar manner.
> 
> Your only argument seems to be that these skillful programmers, that
> presumably have advanced math degrees if they're programming scientific
> number crunching apps, and can figure out how to statically compile
> their app, are too retarded to write a trivial one line wrapper script,
> run ldd on their app, and tar up their app with the libs it needs.

You're oversimplifying and tend to become insultive of this user group
w/o neccessity.

Comparing with the staff at google earth is quite unballanced. Also in
order to ship a "runtime environment" in tarballs you first need to
identify the changing set of needed libraries which is work to invest
and which breaks from FC to FC (you need to redetect the new set of
runtime libs).

These people with "advanced math degrees" don't want to spend their
days in linking intricacies of a Linux distribution, they want to get
their work done and shared either locally or globally. If you have met
this community you will know that they will go Ubuntu the next moment
their static linking is not working on Fedora. That's already
happening BTW, so you'll just be giving more arguments to get the last
scientist off Fedora.

Ask yourself: if it were as easy as you claim (a one-liner) then why
do people use static linking and why is this thread so long? Are all
but you blind?
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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