On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 03:47:45PM -0500, Michael Wojcik wrote: > Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote: > > > > What's wrong with static linking? At least it goes away when the > > application goes away. > > Completely infeasible on Windows. The loss of shared text would make > the working set of the typical application mix grossly exceed even the > absurd amounts of RAM available in typical machines today. The disk > space problem would be even worse. Many people have done > back-of-the-envelope calculations to demonstrate this; I think I did > some myself, in a post to alt.folklore.computers some time back.
I only trust statistics I rigged myself. Some time back I was disputing the sheer possibility to catch a virus using email. Still ... "environments" ... came up that made _not catching one_ an art... So "things done a while back" do not count in IT. Mac OS X pretty much shows that _not_ sharing shared libraries on an application level is a feasible approach to DLL hell. > It's a lousy idea in any case, as anyone who remembers compiling all > of BSD 4.2 to switch from local-files resolution to DNS remembers. > Dynamic linking lets you fix the bug or add the feature in one place. So why go from libstdc++.so.5 to libstdc++.so.6 at all, if incompatible changes can be, as you seem to say, avoided? > We can't have millions of Windows users downloading a refresh of the > entire OS every time a bug is fixed in one of the prominent DLLs. > > Dynamic linking is a good thing. It's worked very well on a number of > OSes. Examples? > It would work on Windows if Microsoft could figure out 1) how to > version properly, and 2) how to maintain backward compatibility. And > it's not like those are unsolved problems. I am happy to have learned now that these problems are solved. Now the only thing I miss is a Star Gate taking me to that parallel universe. Andre' PS: And don't get me wrong: I am painfully aware of what "insufficient" hardware means nowadays, and to my best knowledge I am usually not trying to defend any decision by MS... PPS: I cut a few smileys from the mail to avoid the embarassing ranking in the 1.7 smiley-per-mail statistics.
