Re: *DO* dynamically link distributed executables

Rick Campbell wrote: IMHO, static linking isn't the panacea which this seems to imply. You're just changing the layer at which the binary interfaces with the system, and it's by no means certain that the kernel and protocol layers are any more fixed than the shared library layer. Any binary which has been statically linked against libX11 won't run here unless the builder has used a version which was compiled with XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1 support (which precludes shipping it from within the US, legally at least). Similar considerations apply to many other areas. System database lookups (e.g. getpwnam, gethostby*) may be implemented using network maps, PAM etc. Networking functions may require a libc (or libsocket) with transparent proxy support. System data files (timezone, locale) may be in different locations or different formats. Unix-domain sockets may not be where you expect them to (moving .X11-unix from /tmp to somewhere safe is quite high on my todo list). To my mind, dynamic linking has less to do with efficiency than with not having to recompile half of the OS distribution when something needs to be changed. -- Glynn Clements <glynn(a)sensei.co.uk&gt;