Shared libraries

> The problem comes with updates. If you update (say) ripgrep to fix a bug, and it uses a new monomorphization, that new monomorphization can rely on a new monomorphization inside a library package, and so on.

Or you go back to the old FORTRAN libraries that I worked with. The linker pulled in all the modules it knew it needed (and if it had recursive dependencies you had to link the same library several times to get them all). That also had the side effect that all the functions that your program didn't need didn't end up in the executable.

So we then have some fancy update tool (sorry) that takes two allegedly identical libraries, and goes through merging all the different modules into a new updated library. If it finds the same module in both precursor libraries, it would need to check and enforce the rule that the extern definition was identical, before choosing the version with the newest reference number (maybe defined as the most recent modified date - I think that might be a tricky problem?). Or maybe just updates the original library with new modules that didn't originally exist.

Cheers,
Wol