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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.development:1497 comp.os.386bsd.misc:1645 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!haven.umd.edu!news.umbc.edu!eff!news.kei.com!yeshua.marcam.com!zip.eecs.umich.edu!destroyer!gumby!yale!yale.edu!cmcl2!newsserv.cs.sunysb.edu!stark.UUCP!cs.sunysb.edu!newsserv!stark!gene From: newsserv!stark!gene@cs.sunysb.edu (Gene Stark) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development,comp.os.386bsd.misc Subject: Re: Something positive for a change: FreeBSD 1.0 shared libs are working Date: 18 Nov 93 22:19:04 Organization: Gene Stark's home system Lines: 32 Message-ID: <NEWSSERV!STARK!GENE.93Nov18221904@stark.uucp> References: <JKH.93Nov15003742@whisker.lotus.ie> <CGnz3x.KHu@genesis.nred.ma.us> <2cgdem$7gq@pdq.coe.montana.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: stark.uucp In-reply-to: nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu's message of 18 Nov 1993 18:04:06 GMT In article <2cgdem$7gq@pdq.coe.montana.edu> nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu (Nate Williams) writes: In article <CGnz3x.KHu@genesis.nred.ma.us>, Steve Gerakines <steve2@genesis.nred.ma.us> wrote: > >I was curious. When shared libraries are released for the general >public, are the FreeBSD folks planning on keeping both the static and >shared binary packages on-line? >For the bigger packages, I'm really >starting to enjoy just picking up the binaries when it's all I really >need. Makes life much easier for me. Perhaps the statically bound >stuff will just eventually be phased out? As long as we're on this, I'd like to add my $0.02. I think shared libraries are *great* for a release of a single integrated bunch of software (say, like the FreeBSD binary tree). However shared libraries are the scourge of the earth when it comes to software that is not released as a single unit. The problem is that generally you have to work hard when releasing software to make sure that you create a "closure" that contains both the released binaries and the proper shared libraries. I would say that it is *wrong* *wrong* *wrong* to have shared library compilation to be the default. Shared libraries *should* be the way a system is released, because it saves disk space and memory, but for general use what you want is static linking, so you don't get into the problem of having binaries that can't run because you don't have the proper library versions that somebody forgot to include, etc. etc. You should be forced to think very hard before you compile something to use shared libraries. - Gene Stark --