Rutger Ovidius writes: > Friday, May 6, 2005, 1:33:32 AM, you wrote: > > AH> I don't think that anyone is proposing to drop static libraries on > AH> Win32. Win32 systems have their own requirements that make static > AH> libs preferable in some cases. On GNU systems, however, static libs > AH> make no sense at all for the Java language. > > One of the first things I had hoped for from gcj was static linking > (except for libc) on GNU systems. > > There is new era of shared library hell and it seems to only apply to > libgcj. Having to manually pare down the libgcj .so and distribute it > with apps seems necessary; expecting target users of a new gcj > compiled app to have an absolutely up-to-date and compatible libgcj.so > (probably compiled with small patches along the way to make this > specific app work) is not reasonable.
Yes, which is why we're redesigning the ABI so that compiled apps won't depend on a specific release of the library. We're fixing the real problem rather than depending on nasty kludges like static linking. > Plus, the release cycle of gcc will never match the development > speed of libgcj. There are die hard followers of gcc that do have > up to date systems, but the vast majority do not and never will. That too. > Java is a simple language, used as the intro learning language in most > universities that I know of. Not having to plan memory management like > c++ motivates very fast development. Compiling small utils with it and > having them be portable, even on GNU systems, is an incredible selling > point. Is it really? There are users out there insane enough to be passing around precompiled binaries of small utils? > This isn't really possible without static linking. But Java isn't compatible with static linking. Java is, by its very nature, a dynamic language, where classes invoke and even generate other classes on the fly. There is no way when linking to determine what set of libraries is required. This is a simple fact, and no amount of declaring " this is what users want!" is going to change it. > Sometimes I see a great divide between the developers of gcj, and > the actual users of it. Spare us the ad homs, please. Andrew.
