>From: "Stefan Monnier" <stefan.monnier@lia.di.epfl.ch>
>Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 10:34:20 +0100
>
>> >- what's the use of all the .a files in /usr/lib that got installed when
>> >  I detarred the comp.tar.gz file ?
>> Those are the static versions of your libraries.
>
>Of course, I knew that. My question was more along the lines of what's the
>use of having static libraries ?
>I know it can brinbg a noticeable speed improvement, especially with some
>fancy compilers, but in the specific case of NetBSD, is there some necessity
>for the .a versions ? Maybe to build the kernel (I haven't done it yet, but
>will have to in order to use my second swap partition) ?

Binaries need to be static if:

1) They must work before /usr is mounted (e.g. /bin/*, /sbin/*)
2) They are needed to recover from the loss of a vital component like
   ld.so. (e.g. /usr/bin/tar)

>Also, why are libcompat, libfl, libl, libgcc, liby and librpcsvc only
>available as static libraries ? Of course for libl, libfl, libgcc and liby,
>their small size makes it useless to share them, but the 20K of librpcsvc
>or libcompat seem sufficient to justify a shared-lib version.

Not really.  Remember, in the case of a static library only objects
that satisfy unresolved symbols are linked in.  So it's unlikely that
all of librpcsvc would be included.

>Also, what are the libxxx_p.a ? Are these versions with profiling support ?

Yes.
-- 
Mike Long <mike.long@analog.com>           http://www.shore.net/~mikel
VLSI Design Engineer         finger mikel@shore.net for PGP public key
Analog Devices, CPD Division          CCBF225E7D3F7ECB2C8F7ABB15D9BE7B
Norwood, MA 02062 USA       (eq (opinion 'ADI) (opinion 'mike)) -> nil