Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:38:29 -0800 From: Alfred Perlstein <alfred@freebsd.org> To: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.ORG>, Brooks Davis <brooks@FreeBSD.ORG>, freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: RFC: libkse*.a in 7.0 Message-ID: <20071210193829.GI61429@elvis.mu.org> In-Reply-To: <20071210192533.GA15728@VARK.MIT.EDU> References: <20071128211022.GA74762@lor.one-eyed-alien.net> <20071128213947.Q7555@fledge.watson.org> <20071210192533.GA15728@VARK.MIT.EDU>
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* David Schultz <das@FreeBSD.ORG> [071210 11:36] wrote: > On Wed, Nov 28, 2007, Robert Watson wrote: > > It's worth noting that some other mainstream operating systems work hard to > > disallow static linking for precisely this sort of reason -- when I last > > checked, Mac OS X had only one statically linked binary, init, and it may > > well be that launchd is dynamically linked. This is part of a very > > explicit policy that the defined ABI for applications is *not* the system > > call layer, but rather, the library interfaces, which gives greater > > flexibility to modify the system call interface as needed. > > Solaris has done this for well over a decade, and as a > consequence, they have a stable ABI without adding a bunch of > compat garbage to the kernel. It's mostly done via symbol > versioning in libc and other libraries. Yup. > > Note that it's possible to *provide* static libraries without > *supporting* them. People can link their apps statically if they > so desire, with the understanding that they will need to recompile > when they upgrade to the next major release of FreeBSD. This is a very good point. It's very typical for vendors to statically link things though because of cluelessness over shared libs, we should discourage, _without overly penalizing_, them if they attempt to do so. > Apologies for replying to an old thread. I'm catching up on my email! Well, your comments are still insightful... :) -- - Alfred Perlstein
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