On Monday 06 October 2003 12:43 pm, Aymeric Vincent wrote:
> "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.

Really?  I have yet to see any actual statement from XF86 to this effect, just 
a bunch of people trying to enforce what they seem to think XF86 wants.

At any rate, if they wanted cooperation on this front, they should have fixed 
it 10 years ago.  It's been broken long enough that, frankly, I just don't 
care what the excuse is or was any more.