Martin Buchholz <martin(a)xemacs.org&gt; writes in xemacs-beta(a)xemacs.org: Rick> For a variety of reasons, at least on some platforms -- Linux in Rick> particular -- it's come down to there being a real need for seperate Rick> static and non-static builds. My suspicion is that that need will Rick> still be around for a while. Not particularly. There has been roughly one incompatible libc upgrade per year and a half since I've been using it. The braindamaged way -rpath is implemented (and/or used) is the major problem I've had. Every binary that *does not* link with -rpath handles upgrades. Every binary that uses it breaks on an upgrade. Some idiot has just broken libtool so that using it will force -rpath into link command lines and that's going to cause a whole new round of breakage for the transition glibc-2.0 -> glibc-2.1.