Re: how to make Debian less fragile (long and philosophical)
Quoth Steve Willer:
>
> On Tue, 17 Aug 1999, Steve Lamb wrote:
> >
> > No memory cost? Care to rethink that again?
>
> I have been rethinking it, but as far as I can tell from reading the ldso
> source and from knowing a little bit about how linkers work, there is no
> RAM benefit from using shared libraries. The benefit is on the maintenance
> side, having shared code sitting in a single file. If you can point me to
> a page that explains where I'm wrong (if I am), then please do.
I forget exactly how this works. Does Linux only maintain one in-memory
copy of read-only data (i.e. the code and ro segments of an executable)?
I know that various OS's do this, and I don't remember if linux does. If
so, then dynamically linking won't save you any RAM, since the library
code would be ro anyway. If not, then it might.
More importantly, I think most of us following this thread have come to
the conclusion that static linking is something that some people would
very much like to do, and probably for good reason. Making that
possible/easy would definitely make Debian more robust and widely
deployable, which is a Good Thing (at least in the eyes of most of the
people on this list).
--Paul
paul michael tevis
ptevis@owlnet.rice.edu
http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~ptevis
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