Static linking [LWN.net]

Static linking

Posted Jul 29, 2009 3:44 UTC (Wed) by jeff@uclinux.org (subscriber, #8024)
In reply to: Small problem for Linux ? Sure. Big problem for Linux user? Of course. by elanthis
Parent article: Google Chrome OS and the community

"Are we supposed to install a single 4.4GB RPM?" [when installing a static linked distribution-
portable game]

Well, game? Maybe 400M. Other things, sure. Doesn't make it right, but the incompatibility
problem is really quite serious, and disk space is cheap. Just for example... Download Xilinx
WebPack 11.1:

Jeff$ ls -l Xilinx_11.1_WebPack_SFD.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 jeff users 2868316160 Apr 30 13:39 Xilinx_11.1_WebPack_SFD.tar

It's on that order of magnitude even with compressed installer files inside the tar. Mostly static
linked. Yes, I think for serious programs, this is a serious option. These programs have to work
today, next month, next year... if they achieve that, we'll see. If I need to distribute tools
binaries, --enable-static --disable-shared.

I think Bionic libc is a stellar library for a cell phone. I have never built any embedded system
with glibc, if you're doing that, you're not making the right engineering choices.

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