Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 22:08:54 +0100 From: Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@Leidinger.net> To: David Schultz <das@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: Brooks Davis <brooks@FreeBSD.ORG>, Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.ORG>, freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: RFC: libkse*.a in 7.0 Message-ID: <20071210220854.07e02f1f@deskjail> In-Reply-To: <20071210192533.GA15728@VARK.MIT.EDU> References: <20071128211022.GA74762@lor.one-eyed-alien.net> <20071128213947.Q7555@fledge.watson.org> <20071210192533.GA15728@VARK.MIT.EDU>
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Quoting David Schultz <das@FreeBSD.ORG> (Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:25:33 -0500): > On Wed, Nov 28, 2007, Robert Watson wrote: > > It's worth noting that some other mainstream operating systems work hard to > > disallow static linking for precisely this sort of reason -- when I last > > checked, Mac OS X had only one statically linked binary, init, and it may > > well be that launchd is dynamically linked. This is part of a very > > explicit policy that the defined ABI for applications is *not* the system > > call layer, but rather, the library interfaces, which gives greater > > flexibility to modify the system call interface as needed. > > Solaris has done this for well over a decade, and as a > consequence, they have a stable ABI without adding a bunch of > compat garbage to the kernel. It's mostly done via symbol > versioning in libc and other libraries. Running Solaris 8/9 programs is not supported by SUN on Solaris 10. It works in some cases, but it doesn't work in some other cases. And now some people work on using BrandZ (if you know nothing about it, it's sort of like our technology used to do our linuxulator or freebsd32 on amd64; that's not accurate, but is good enough for the point I want to make) to provide a Solaris 10 container (think about it as a jail on steroides) with an Solaris X (X < 10) image, so that people can install a Solaris 10 host and run Solaris X in it (like our linuxulator in a jail, but not as flexible as our linuxulator, theirs can not run on the main system like ours can). So I would not say it is that fafourable. AFAIK there where major kernel changes and they didn't want to do some compat shims. I think we did a much better job so far in providing backward compatibility in the kernel, and when we lose the ability to run e.g. a complete FreeBSD X in a jail of a FreeBSD X+1 system, we would lose a lot of users (portmgr included, as they run the 5.x and 6.x builds on a -current system). So as long as we can run an old system in a jail, do whatever you want regarding static/dynamic libs, but if someone is on the way to destroy our compatibility in the kernel... boy, think not only once, twice or trice, think more about this. Bye, Alexander. -- There is a multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder. -- Spock, "A Taste of Armageddon", stardate 3193.9 http://www.Leidinger.net Alexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID = B0063FE7 http://www.FreeBSD.org netchild @ FreeBSD.org : PGP ID = 72077137
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