Re: question regarding prelinking (was: (inc. note from dpkg developers) (was: Bug#XXXXXX: (far too many packages) needs rebuilt for prelinking))

[Philippe Troin <phil@fifi.org>]

Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> writes:

> On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 10:21:54AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > This is probably a stupid question, but:
> 
> Thanks for the explanations, folks.  Glad to know I guessed more-or-less
> correctly.
> 
> Unfortunately(?), I cannot weigh in on the main dispute of this issue.
> I am sympathetic to improved application startup times, but I am also
> sympathetic to Adam Heath's feelings about dpkg-unpacked files (except
> for conffiles, of course) remaining in pristine condition by default.

I second that.

> Not sure how to reconcile that conflict.

Make it optional?

We could have three settings:

 1. Do not ever prelink.

 2. Prelink but keep the unprelinked libraries in a backup area
    (eg. /usr/lib.noprelink), with the possibility of reverting to
    option #1 (no prelinking) without reinstalling all the packages.

 3. Prelink and discard the unprelinked libraries. The only way to
    revert to unprelinked libraries is reinstalling all the library
    packages.

This could be handled by wrapping the prelink binary.

Phil.