> I think the big reason Linux has mostly dodged "DLL hell" is that a large chunk of Linux applications are either built from source on the target system, or in

> I think the big reason Linux has mostly dodged "DLL hell" is that a large chunk of Linux applications are either built from source on the target system, or installed via packages that were built specifically for the target system. Correspondingly, that's a non-technical thing to appreciate about shared libraries: they ended up creating the environment where building programs from source or installing them from maintainer provided packages was the only way to do things. If we end up moving to languages where static linking is the norm (or the only option), ecosystem shift away from the maintainer + source based approach might be unavoidable. To my mind, that's pretty clearly a bad thing. It's how you end up with the node ecosystem's security problems, not something as reliable as most Linux desktops have been for decades.