[Fedora-packaging] Package-internal static linkage

[Ralf Corsepius]

Ville Skyttä wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Do the "no static linking" rules apply equally also to cases where the lib and 
> the executable packaged are from the same package build?
Generally speaking, yes.

 From a bit more radical position: Yes, especially in these cases, 
because the savings on disc-space typically show best on in these cases.

(Consider 10 statically linked application binaries + shared binaries. 
In worst case, this means 11 times duplicated object files)

 From a pragmatical position: There are probably 100s of packages, where 
this is done unnoticed.

> I'm packaging xz and intend to ship only shared libs, executables and devel 
> files as usual, but upstream likes to link the executables statically with the 
> rationale (liblzma comes from the same package, linkage would be done against 
> the non-shipped static liblzma created during the build):
OK, liblzma explains it ;)

> ## Always link the command line tool statically against liblzma. It is
> ## faster on x86, because no need for PIC. We also have one dependency less,
> ## which allows users to more freely copy the xz binary to other boxes.
Is this what they are telling you?

Unless I am mistaken, lzma+liblzma have had several API/ABI breakages in 
the past. I am inclined to think there actual reasons might be 
elsewhere, ...

> It's easy enough to change this and link the executables dynamically, and I 
> haven't bothered to get any numbers to check the upstream claim.  But I 
> suppose the primary security reason against static linkage doesn't really 
> apply that much when the executable and the lib are results from the same 
> package build, so I thought I'd ask if there are strong opinions on whether 
> this would be a valid exception to the no static linkage guideline or not 
> (none here).


Ralf