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I agree, but if you're bundling the dependencies why not just statically link them too? I've never understood the way macOS does it (dynamic linking, but app bu
by Wowfunhappy 5y ago
I agree, but if you're bundling the dependencies why not just statically link them too? I've never understood the way macOS does it (dynamic linking, but app bundles ship with the libraries they need included).
- ziml77 5y agoIn some cases it's required such as if you're using a closed-source library that doesn't provide a static version or if you're calling LGPL code from non-GPL-compatible code.
- alkonaut 5y agoThis is also how windows apps always worked. It’s good for deployment because an update might not touch more than a few files. Also not all language ecosystems support static linking at all, e.g .NET
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Also not all language ecosystems support static linking at all, e.g .NET The “language ecosystem” of .NET supports static linking via .NET Native, doesn't it?
- mastax 5y ago.NET native is a dead end technology that only supported old UWP apps. There's the new single file builds but those just concatenate the dynamic libs together into one file. There's also the new .NET linker for trimmed builds, but that requires special annotations from many libs to work.
- xg15 5y agoNot a mac user, but one upside I can see is that this forces apps to at least declare which libraries they are using. If everything is statically linked, it might be hard to figure out where on the system a vulnerable library is being used at all.