Linking in gwrapguile statically: why?

Robert Graham Merkel rgmerk@mira.net
Mon, 7 Aug 2000 14:24:39 +1000 (EST)


Hans de Graaff writes:
 > Hi,
 > 
 > Currently configure.in wants to link in gwrapguile as a static
 > library. Is there any good reason for this? I only have the shared
 > library installed, so I made the following patch to configure.in to
 > get gnucash to compile:
 > 
 > Index: configure.in
 > ===================================================================
 > RCS file: /home/cvs/cvsroot/gnucash/configure.in,v
 > retrieving revision 1.125
 > diff -r1.125 configure.in
 > 347c347
 > <   G_WRAP_LINK_ARGS=`${G_WRAP_CONFIG} --c-static-link-args guile`
 > ---
 > >   G_WRAP_LINK_ARGS=`${G_WRAP_CONFIG} --c-link-args guile`
 > 
 > 
 > As far as I can tell this should also work if only a static library is
 > installed, and thus seems to me to be the better solution, unless I'm
 > missing something else. Gnucash works fine when linked this way,
 > though.

You're right, it'll work fine dynamically linked.

It's done this way because:

1) libgwrapguile is a rather non-standard library (it hasn't made it in
to several of the distributions yet, and the API has not yet
stabilised), and statically linking it in avoided lots
of anguished email on the list from people installing the RPM and not
being able to get it to work.  GnuCash has a reputation for being a
pain to install, and we don't want to needlessly add to it.

2) It's only a very small library, so the bloat caused by adding it is
minimal.

When problem 1) goes away, we'll almost certainly change it to use the
dynamic library.

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Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk@mira.net

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