Re: [dev] Detaolb

Concise you are not sir.

> Gnome is better than Ktorrent anyway.

Okay, now you're not even trying. :)

Thomas

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 11:24:39PM +1000, Nathan Hutchison wrote:
> I agree with some of the points you raise Kris, imagine staticly linked KDE
> eeeep.
>
> But on the other hand, a lot of functions that you might like to have
> inlined will not be, and a lot of functions will be dynamic, when in fact,
> no one is using them, at all.
>
> So I think the key is controlling what is dynamic and what is static... But
> that makes the dev model less minimalist.
>
> I'm not providing this as any proof, more as trivia, but plan9 is static
> linked, reasons like dependency hell are listed, it makes the OS its self
> less complicated and the libraries less complicated.
> Plan9 gains code reuse using servers and file systems, which to me, is a
> little better.
>
> Still if the static malloc() has some huge flaw, you won't be able to just
> hit glibc, and magicly fix it, but how often is an interface fix that simple
> anyway. Tracking code use through software can't totaly be solved by dynamic
> linking.
>
> So static linking with nice lean code like plan9, but the problem is, we
> wanna use linux and if we want to use expected linux applications, we want
> glibc and we want to use gcc and hell soon enough we have a whole gnu
> toolchain and the advantages are looking sketchy.
>
> I once saw an old linux version patched to compile with tcc, I'd love to see
> a tight staticly linked distro built with this, tcc would see a more
> dramatic performance gain in my imagination. And not having a gcc install
> and the faster compile times is swell.
>
> I agree that static linking is unreasonable with the current flow of things,
> but I disagree that going aganst the flow and being unreasonable is bad, its
> worth trying simply because not many distros do it. But I do think it would
> be good to try and replace it with something else...
>
> Although I imagine a lot less testing of static linked applications happens
> and I'm not sure upstream devs will be happy to help when you post issues
> with static linking.
>
> Anywho chill out Kris, it might seem like a subject has no room for debate,
> but every idea has the right to breath. I'm skeptical that just taking
> ubuntu and then linking it staticly would make it faster (in fact when I was
> toying with prelink I benchmarks showed my system was slower.). But with
> love and care it's possible, and it might at least solve some package
> managment issues, and decress tool chain bloat?
>
> shared libraries are obviously a good idea until you’ve actually used
> them. then whether it’s obvious or not that they’re a bad idea is mostly a
> matter of how close you are to trying to get them to work.
>
> - Rob Pike
>
>
> Minimalism can be applied to many aspects of a distro.
>
> Also chroots are less complicated with static linking.
>
> Worth reading:
> http://people.redhat.com/drepper/no_static_linking.html
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_hell
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelinking
> http://anselmgarbe.blogspot.com/2008/02/linking_15.html
> http://blogs.sun.com/rvs/entry/what_does_dynamic_linking_and
>
> Lots of ideas for and aganst, come to think of it, I'm not sure if Kris was
> saying that static linking has no merit or mearly that it's not
> minimalism.... Etherway I think the debate has a way to go.
>
> Gnome is better than Ktorrent anyway.
>
> 2009/5/23 Kris Maglione <maglione.k_AT_gmail.com>
>
> > On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 12:28:47PM +0200, Matthias-Christian Ott wrote:
> >
> >> On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 11:17:18AM +0200, pancake wrote:
> >>
> >>> http://detaolb.sourceforge.net/
> >>>
> >>> Just my first time I see this minimal devel distro :)
> >>>
> >>
> >> uClibc is by no means minimal, even though it's smaller than glibc.
> >>
> >> In my opinion a minimal system has all libraries in source code form
> >> and statically links and compiles them with the programme's source code
> >> (much like templates in C++). You can do a lot of optimisations using
> >> this approach (constant propagation and dead code elimination, inlining
> >> etc.), the programmes can be sequentially read from disk and will be
> >> much smaller.
> >>
> >
> > I don't know why I'm getting into this. I can't help but suspect that this
> > is troll bait, but I don't know what goes on on this list. What you just
> > said makes no sense to me. None of that has anything to do with minimalism.
> > Efficiency, maybe. Disk efficiency, certainly not. There are reasons that
> > most embedded systems dynamically link everything: it saves disk space. And,
> > as for the read speed, dynamically linked libs are mmaped (on most systems,
> > anyway) and shared between processes, which means, of course, that they're
> > read into memory once. Statically linked binaries certainly might be read
> > faster. They might not. It depends on too many variables to make blanked
> > statements.
> >
> > Well, at any rate, I've just reread your post, and realized that that kind
> > of nonsensical tripe (strewn with unconnected buzz words) can't be anything
> > but troll bait. Nevertheless, I've gone to all the trouble of composing this
> > rant, so I may as well send it.
> >
> > --
> > Kris Maglione
> >
> > And the users exclaimed with a laugh and a taunt: "It's just what we
> > asked for but not what we want."
> >
> >
> >
Received on Sat May 23 2009 - 13:44:45 UTC