At Wed, 6 May 2009 10:15:41 +0200, Hauke Fath
<hf%spg.tu-darmstadt.de@localhost> wrote:
Subject: Re: perspective regarding documented problem in NetBSD 5.0
>
> Well, from a recent exchange with Christos on an amd(8) issue, I got
> the impression that building NetBSD statically linked is (still)
> supported, and if it doesn't work, it's a bug.
>
> Maybe I should try one of these days, and report the (likely) fallout.
Well I do still build all of my own NetBSD-4 releases as fully
static-linked systems.
That's just the base OS (incl. xsrc) of course, and I don't know if
there's anything requiring pthreads in the base OS or not, but so far I
haven't encountered any problems with anything. I've had to make a few
patches for CITRUS support, and I don't include PAM in my builds, but
other than that it all works very well!
I do try to build as many packages as possible with static linking too,
but there are many that don't use pthreads and which still won't even
build properly (even after correcting their linker '-l' options), and/or
work properly, and many mostly due to complete ignorance on the part of
their developers. Code that won't work static-linked is plainly broken,
by my definition. Dynamic loading of libraries is totally unnecessary,
and given the many bugs in ld.so as well as some potential security
isses, often dangerous. Dynamic loading of extension modules, such as
what Cyrus SASL can optionally do, and what some language interpreters
do, is helpful in environments where binary distributions prevail and
where operational requirements are 'dynamic', but for folks who build
from source to meet pre-determined requirements, there's no real gain --
just runtime overhead. (there's some overhead with static linking too,
most notably in disk space consumption, but generally static binaries
start _much_ faster)
It would be very nice if pthreads did work properly for static linked
binaries, of course. If there's anything I can do to help, without
being knowledgeable about pthreads, please let me know. I can offer my
patches, experience with static-built NetBSD, my CD images, access to my
test systems, etc.
--
Greg A. Woods
Planix, Inc.
<woods%planix.com@localhost> +1 416 218-0099 http://www.planix.com/
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