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If we used static compilation for everything, this wouldn't be a problem. Our problem would then be higher memory consumption, but I can fix that for $50--at le
by jff 15y ago
If we used static compilation for everything, this wouldn't be a problem. Our problem would then be higher memory consumption, but I can fix that for $50--at least until the next Ubuntu release comes out.
Speaking of that, I wonder if there's some point at which dynamic libraries don't really help you that much. These days, even shared libraries don't seem to stop a GNOME desktop running a browser from sucking down a gig of memory; would it really kill them to have a couple more megs of static library in each program? With copy-on-write, I think things like Chrome which spawn many children would come out pretty well.
- josephg 15y agoUsing shared libraries also decreases application startup time, because applications don't need to read as much code from disk. Even using an SSD I suspect the difference would be noticable for most applications.
- evanlong 15y agoOne advantage to shared libs/dlls is that a security fix will be applied to all applications that depend on that. So if everyone statically links against insecure libA.a then all apps that depend on it need to ship a patch. Where as if libA is shipped as a shared library then one update needs to be applied. That's one advantage but maybe not the best.
- im3w1l 15y agoWhat if we could have opportunistic dynamic linking, where an application uses a shared library, if present and compatible, and otherwise uses the bundled? Seems to get the best of both worlds, no?