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> Oh, yes, I certainly would. Shared libraries are an expensive, trouble-prone solution for that relatively uncommon problem. This personal assertion has no be

> Oh, yes, I certainly would. Shared libraries are an expensive, trouble-prone solution for that relatively uncommon problem. This personal assertion has no bearing in the real world. Please do shine some light on what exactly do you interpret as "expensive", and in the process explain why do you feel that basic software design principles like modularity and the ability to fix security vulnerabilities in the whole system by updating a single shared library is "trouble-prone". I mean, the whole world never saw a real world problem, not the UNIX comunity nor Microsoft and it's Windows design nor Apple and it's macOS design not anyone ever, but somehow here you are claiming the opposite.

jen20 4y ago
> the whole world never saw a real world problem, not the UNIX comunity nor Microsoft and it's Windows design "DLL hell" [1] was absolutely a thing. It was solved only by everyone shipping the world in their application directories. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLL_Hell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLL_Hell
- naasking 4y ago
  Not to mention dynamic linking is brutally slow. I don't think people even realize how many cycles are wasted. The notion that dynamic linking never had any real problems and still doesn't is totally false.
jiggawatts 4y ago
> basic software design principles like modularity A single product can have a modular design, but modularity across unrelated products designed by different designers is a different concept that should have a different name. In my opinion it’s just not something that really works. This is similar to the “ability” of some software to have multiple pluggable database engines. This always yields a product that can use only the lowest common denominator… badly. But now imagine having to coordinate the sharing of database engines across multiple relying products! So upgrading Oracle would break A, B and fix C, but switching A and B to MySQL would require and update to MySQL that would break D, E and F. That kind of thing happens all the time and people run away screaming rather than deal with it. Shared libraries are the same problem.
colordrops 4y ago
You aren't updating it for the whole system if some of the binaries are statically linked or have their own implementations. The point is that no matter what, you still have to audit all binaries.

jen20 4y ago

> the whole world never saw a real world problem, not the UNIX comunity nor Microsoft and it's Windows design "DLL hell" [1] was absolutely a thing. It was solved only by everyone shipping the world in their application directories. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLL_Hell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLL_Hell

naasking 4y ago
Not to mention dynamic linking is brutally slow. I don't think people even realize how many cycles are wasted. The notion that dynamic linking never had any real problems and still doesn't is totally false.

jiggawatts 4y ago

> basic software design principles like modularity A single product can have a modular design, but modularity across unrelated products designed by different designers is a different concept that should have a different name. In my opinion it’s just not something that really works. This is similar to the “ability” of some software to have multiple pluggable database engines. This always yields a product that can use only the lowest common denominator… badly. But now imagine having to coordinate the sharing of database engines across multiple relying products! So upgrading Oracle would break A, B and fix C, but switching A and B to MySQL would require and update to MySQL that would break D, E and F. That kind of thing happens all the time and people run away screaming rather than deal with it. Shared libraries are the same problem.

colordrops 4y ago

You aren't updating it for the whole system if some of the binaries are statically linked or have their own implementations. The point is that no matter what, you still have to audit all binaries.