On Wed, 20 Aug 2003, Greg A. Woods wrote:

: > 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.

: It also depends on how often the application(s) in question are started.

pkgsrc has no way to know either of these aspects of a given environment,
so they are irrelevant in this context.  (But note what I said about knobs
that turn *off* default behaviors.)

: 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

NetBSD and its pkgsrc target machines where adding "sufficient RAM" is often
not an option.  Hence pkgsrc uses shared objects rather broadly.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv@pobox.com>