"Charles M. Hannum" <abuse@spamalicious.com> writes:

> > There is code in OpenBSD's XF4 to handle the creation of _pic.a libs
> > for libraries that are otherwise static only. It will probably go into
> > the next XFree86 release. Let me know if you want the patch.
> >
> > For now Linux handles this by putting pic objects into the .a libs.
> 
> What, pray tell, is the point of this stupid perversion, when creating
> shared libraries works, and is what several vendors already do?  (Even
> some Linux systems do on non-x86 platforms.)

If I understand correctly, the point of using (PIC) static libraries
instead of shared libraries is that you can replace the API of the
library at any point in time without bothering about keeping binary
compatibility for software compiled with a former version of the API.

And for whatever reason, XF86 people want to keep the freedom of
changing their API for a few libraries. I think we should cooperate
with them in this respect instead of following the wrong move of
several Linux vendors.

 Aymeric