static linking with portage

defer- · Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 4:04 pm Post subject: static linking with portage

Some people seems to think static linking as better practice than dynamic linking. So is it hard to set portage to link statically everything it compiles? AFAIK dynamically linked binaries should be a bit smaller in size and sometimes a bit slower in execution. What is your opinion, dynamic or static linking?

http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/dynamic-linking/
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Naib · Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 8:25 pm Post subject:

its not so much portage, but the build process of each package.
if you were to make a patch file for each package out there to statically link and then use portage to merge that patch the sure...

but why? you would end up with so much duplication in binary data it would be expensive.
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The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

There is the static and static-libs use flags, but they can do weird things. For example, root stops being able to display graphs.

I'd stick with dynamic whenever possible.
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defer- · Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 9:27 pm Post subject:

Yeah i also have understood it that way there would be more disk usage. Some people argue that the static binaries dont grow much larger. Like people from cat-v and suckless. Suckless is planning stali distro with static binaries. I had understood its about CFLAGS or make config to build static binaries, not about patches?

I didnt get it what you meant about root dont be able to display graphs. I really dont need any graphs at all in my system if i got the context right.
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The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

By root I mean the graphing software developed by CERN, not the root user of the computer. Sorry for the confusion.
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First things first, but not necessarily in that order.

Apologies if I take a while to respond. I'm currently working on the dematerialization circuit for my blue box.

Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21607

Static binaries use more memory because they lose the ability to share library pages among all the processes using that library. I recommend using static linking only when the program must be run in an environment where dynamic linking does not work.