g-wrap lost - So am I

[Michael + Jennifer Garrison Stuber]

Quoting "John L. Turner" <jlt@wvinter.net>:

> Could you just include all those libraries in the package ?
> ? Make the entire binary

I've thought this myself on occassion.  The plus side of linking things
statically is that once something is built, you really don't have to worry much
about dependencies.  There are some of minuses though:  First of all, your
executables get to be huge, because they've got all this library code linked in.
 Second, if there is a bug in a library, you have to wait for the maintainer of
the massive binary to update it. ( For example, the new Linux Worm Slapper
exploits a bug in OpenSSL.  Because Apache is linked dynamically I could simply
update OpenSSL.  I didn't have to download new copies of everything that uses
it. )  Finally, and I'm not sure whether this applies on Linux, on some O/Ss if
you have a shared library it can be cached in memory and used by multiple
applications.  Statically linked libraries can only be used by the program they
are linked into.  Somebody who knows the finer points of libraries under Linux
will have to confirm or deny whether this is the case.

Personally, I run machines with pretty big disks, and nice amounts of RAM, so
the wasted space wouldn't bother me, but the downloads would be obscene.

--
Michael T. Garrison Stuber

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