On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 04:52:52PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > > As I understand it, the performance drawbacks of a shared library are:
> > 1) The PIC code and its use of a GOT. Given that we're talking about a > > PIC static library, this is not relevant. > The argument was that a shared library is 'too slow'. Reading the > discussion thread that Christian pointed to, it appears that Monty > doesn't actually know what he's talking about, but read on some random > IBM website that shared libraries are slower. Well, yes they are, but > not by much, and the pain static libraries introduce outweighs that by > much. > Note also that shared libraries are only slower on x86 hardware due to > the fact that they don't natively do PC-relative addressing, which needs > to be emulated; x86_64 has dealt with this, and most other architecture > (including m68k, for those following along at home) properly support it. Yes, the *main* reason shared libraries are "too slow" is because they have to be built with -fPIC, *and -fPIC is slow on i386*. So building a _pic static library is pointless here, because it avoids all the benefits of a shared library while bringing in the one drawback of shared libraries that upstream appears to actually care about. This should be maintained as a shared library instead. Static libraries are bad for security in general, and absolutely awful when they embed something like a sql server. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
