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by mcot2 4502 days ago
Maybe if we didn't have gigabytes of RAM these days. I quite like the idea of static linking. It makes software packaging and distribution very very easy and it has some security benefits. Go's build system is a good example of this. This project seems to be dead.
2 comments

I have mixed feelings about the security gains.

On one hand, you eliminate one attack vector since you take ldd out of the equation. On the other hand, you depend on packagers who distribute their programs to rebuild and relink them every time a security issue creeps up a library they link with. I'm not sure I like that, and I don't have the free time I had in high school when compiling everything by hand seemed really fucking cool.

It's the distribution and packaging parts that I love about it. Also might help with cross-platform distribution as well; While dynamic linking does have advantages, I get really frustrated when an old application won't run on a new kernel due to requiring old libraries that simply can't be installed. Static linking fixes that, and it's why anything I try and write is statically linked for the most part!
Ever looked at Nix and NixOS?