[argyllcms] Re: Argyllcms 1.0.1 packaged in fedora-devel

On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 8:22 PM, edmund ronald <edmundronald@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Frederic
>
> I have been working with people bringing up instrument drivers, and
> have recommended adopting static linking because of the ease of
> installation and robustness that we can see with Graeme's software.
> Maybe you could explain in simple words I can understand why  static
> linking is a bad thing ?

From a distribution PoV, static linking mean you can't fix something
one time and be sure the fix
is available for ALL programs using the library.

Years ago, when the first zlib vulnerabily was released, people spend
months on fixing the various copy of zlib
embedded in all kind of programs, because of static linking or (even
worse) copy/pasted code.

Same issue for libpng/libjpeg.

While I can understand static linking might be a nice workaround for
people distributing binaries, as a distro maintainer for more than 8
years, I can certified you it is just a workaround and it should be
avoided as much as possible (specially if programs are available for
the distribution).

-- 
Frederic Crozat

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