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Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:06:36 -0800
From: Alfred Perlstein <alfred@freebsd.org>
To: Daniel Eischen <deischen@freebsd.org>
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Cc: Brooks Davis <brooks@freebsd.org>, Robert Watson <rwatson@freebsd.org>,
	freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: RFC: libkse*.a in 7.0
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* Daniel Eischen <deischen@freebsd.org> [071128 14:05] wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Nov 2007, Robert Watson wrote:
> 
> >
> >On Wed, 28 Nov 2007, Brooks Davis wrote:
> >
> >>A number of people have proposed a direction in 8.0 that would remove 
> >>support for the syscalls and kernel data structures required by libkse. 
> >>Apparently this would enable significant simplification of portions of 
> >>the kernel, but I have no deeply held personal opinion.  The intent is 
> >>that if that happens, alternate versions of the necessicary dynamic 
> >>libraries will be supplied in updated compat#x packages.  This will 
> >>address most consumers. The one set of consumers that would not be 
> >>addressed is those who have statically linked, threaded binaries using 
> >>libkse.
> >
> >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.
> 
> I argued for removing libc.a as well as lib<thread>.a a couple of
> years ago and was met with opposition, mostly because statically
> linked applications are faster.
> 
> I think we should remove libthr.a, libkse.a and libc.a, so flame on!

I agree, as long as someone can flip a switch and turn it back on
for ISVs.

-Alfred