Hi,

as you probably noticed we are builing the kolab groupware server on top of 
OpenPKG.

During the development we gained the experience that the static linking 
approach causes multiple problems while not granting any significant 
advantages.

o the resulting binaries are still not portable between different versions of 
the OS due to the fact that not all libraries are static.

o it often happens that packages pick up the libraries provided by the host OS 
instead of the OpenPKG counterparts during build because the standard 
configure scripts are satisified with finding the required libs in standard 
places (like /lib or /usr/lib).

oo modifiying the configure stuff is a maintainance nightmare and violates the 
minimal impact philosophy.

oo it is rather difficult to detect if the wrong library or the wrong header 
was used during build when looking at the final binaries. The simple ldd 
approach usable for shared libraries fails here.

oo When doing the recommended build from source the resulting binaries differ 
depending on many factors. This is a big maintainane problem for us because 
we can not easily help people on mailing lists in this case and only get 
useless bug reports.

I therefor want to propose to drop the static building approach in OpenPKG. In 
the end it looks like there is more to loose than to win with static linking. 
All platforms which are supported by OpenPKG and also most unsupported 
platforms have in the meantime decent support for shared libraries.

Regards,
-- martin

Dipl.-Phys. Martin Konold

e r f r a k o n
Erlewein, Frank, Konold & Partner - Beratende Ingenieure und Physiker
Nobelstrasse 15, 70569  Stuttgart, Germany
mobil: 0175 4148693
fax: 0175 13 4148693
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

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