[Fedora-packaging] paragraph on shipping static numerical libs

[Patrice Dumas]

On Sun, May 27, 2007 at 07:59:44PM +0100, Jonathan Underwood wrote:
> 
> A program statically linked with GMP running on two different
> platforms giving different answers.

That's not surprising. I never made the assumption that the results of
the binaries would be exactly the same.

> Fedora is usually based on the latest glibc. Segfaults seem to ensue
> when running a statically linked binary compiled on Fedora with a
> system  with an earlier glibc.

I never experienced that.

> Yeah, I phrased the poorly. I use Fedora daily for numerical work.
> What i meant was, if you're really loking for a reliable and
> reproducible setup for running numerical calcs based on static linking

I am not wanting that, not at all. I just want to be able to run 
the numerical model on the other platform, not to have the same
results. For some models I also expect the results to be the same, but
not in all cases.

> and distributing binaries, you wouldn't want to use a distro with
> rapid ABI turnover.

Certainly more important is the hardware.

> Right - that's what I meant the last sentence - so why go to the
> bother of making statically linkable libraries available if it doesn't
> actually achieve the goal of producing portable binaries, but rather
> gives people false hope. That's what I'd call wasting people's time,
> or giving them a noose to hang themselves with.

I am not saying that the results will be the same. I don't want to
achieve reproducability, I just want a binary that runs on that
platform. I don't expect a chaotic model to give the same results, for
example.

> It seems to me that the use case doesn't justify what you're asking
> for though. The solution you're proposing (allowing users to link
> statically to system wide libraries) doesn't achieve the goal
> (producing "run anywhere" binaries). As Matthias pointed out, if

It does so. At least for me binaries linked on fedora may be run on
centos4 with a different set of libraries/compilers.

> someone is hell bent on producing statically linked binaries, then
> they can download the source for the libraries they need and build and
> link statically against them.

Of course, but it would be way better for them if we could help them.

--
Pat