Subject: Re: lightweight groff package?
To: NetBSD Packages Technical Discussion List <tech-pkg@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@weird.com>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 08/20/2003 17:53:14
[ On Wednesday, August 20, 2003 at 15:53:21 (-0400), Todd Vierling wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: lightweight groff package?
>
> Right, but static libraries have runtime bloat too.

Maybe.  It all depends on how many applications sharing the same library
might run at the same time.

Obviously there's no additional runtime bloat for a single application
with multiple running instances since NetBSD shares all process text
regions.

It also depends on how often the application(s) in question are started.
If they are started often then the cost (in terms of overall run-time)
of having multiple different applications loading the "same" text from
separate copies of the same library may easily be outweighed by the
savings gained from not having to dynamically link those same libraries
at every start-up.  This savings can be further increased by completely
static-linking the whole application and thus completely avoiding any
need to run "ld.so" in the first place.

Indeed static-linking of the entire system can increase overall system
throughput a great deal for some types of applications, such as
compiling (assuming sufficient RAM is added to the system to off-set the
additional overhead of having multiple copies of library code loaded in
each program).

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098                  VE3TCP            RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>          Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>