On Sun, Dec 6, 2020 at 10:31 AM Riccardo Mottola via macports-users <macports-users@lists.macports.org> wrote: > > Hi, > > On 12/5/20 8:07 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote: > > Obviously the block would need some tweaking for a given port, it gives the > idea. > > I can't think of a reason why we would want to offer such a thing. > > I can think of two scenarios: > > - building "always safe" binaries which can be used at system level, e.g. > login shells, tools, things put in launchd. That is things you want to always > work, even if you are during a MacPorts upgrade. NetBSD offers two packages > for the same thing, e.g. bash and bash-static, IIRC. perhaps in MacPorts it > could be a "variant"? > > - a special case of the above is an issue coming up on legacy MacOS more > often where this happens with buildtools, e.g. a "static" version of certain > tools which are more needed than on modern systems where the system ones are > "good enough". When these build tools break MacPorts itself becomes much more > a hassle itself to update
Static linking also allows you to move binaries around the filesystem with dicking around with otool and install_name_tool. Stack Overflow has several questions related to OS X programs that are linked to OpenSSL. The programs had a lot of trouble once bundled because of the antique version of OpenSSL supplied by Apple. Jeff
