The following reply was made to PR lib/37473; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: christos@zoulas.com (Christos Zoulas)
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org, ad@NetBSD.org, gnats-admin@netbsd.org,
	netbsd-bugs@netbsd.org, jmcneill@invisible.ca
Cc: 
Subject: Re: lib/37473 (Statically linked executables are much larger in -current)
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2007 12:49:43 -0500

 On Dec 4,  5:35pm, thorpej@shagadelic.org (Jason Thorpe) wrote:
 -- Subject: Re: lib/37473 (Statically linked executables are much larger in -
 
 |  And we know for a fact that's the problem?  A link map would be useful.
 
 I believe so. Last time this happened was in ld.so...
 |
 |  Of course, it's not clear that we should care that much about this  
 |  problem.  IMO, we should de-support statically-linked binaries (and  
 |  make the .a versions optional installs).
 
 Well, this is the way OS/X went, and it was a bitch for me to bootstrap
 the emulation code because I could not build a statically linked binary.
 Trying to get the emulation going with a dynamically linked binary was
 a pain in the ass because too much stuff needed to go right before I
 even started executing main(). Yes, this is a limited case and I agree
 with you that we should make .a's optional in the install, but I would
 hate to completely lose the ability to produce statically linked binaries
 like OS/X has. There are still a few corner cases (installers, standalone
 programs) that can benefit from static linking.
 
 christos