Re: SUMMARY: Re: shared library -dev package naming proposal

[Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>]

Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:

> I think static libs have outlived their usefulness in Debian for the
> most part; but using this to justify creating whole *new* packages for
> static linking would just be insane.  The dependencies of -dev packages
> are just not that big a deal to warrant having to manage all of these
> new binary packages.

Fully statically linked binaries (including a static libc) are not
particularly useful these days, nor is statically linking *within* Debian
in official packages.  However, statically linking is still rather useful
for Debian *users* from time to time.

For example, I occasionally build binaries that use the Kerberos libraries
and explicitly link just the Kerberos libraries (but not libc) static,
since the binaries are then easily portable to any other Linux
distribution without having to worry about whether the right libraries are
installed.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>