Re: Compiling "static" applications with SWT/GTK

["Steve D. Perkins" <mailinglists at steveperkins dot net>]

Mohan Embar wrote:

> I'm probably going to get tarred and feathered for this, but
> I don't understand the deployment problem either. Even on
> Windows, I typically make my deployment "unit" a small executable
> plus a number of DLLs all deployed in the same directory.
> This seems to me the best of all worlds, especially if the distributed
> bundle contains not one, but possibly several interrelated
> executables as is often the case.
   I guess the main thing I don't understand is why static vs. dynamic 
linking is something that you choose as a configure option when building 
the compiler from source.  I mean, my GCJ installation in my Linux 
environment ships with a libgcj static library and a libgcj shared 
library, and GCJ has a "-static" flag... so what's the problem?  If 
there are problems with the "-static" flag, or static compilation in 
general, it would seem to make more sense to resolve those issues... 
rather than leave it broken and tell people "it's like that on purpose", 
or "it's for your own good".


> Hey Ranjit and Steve: if you have so much time to write about this ( :) ),
> can you weigh in on this:
>
> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/java-patches/2003-q4/msg00438.html
   You've got a short memory, Mohan!  We emailed about this last week.  
My vote still goes (and always will go) towards NOT imposing licensing 
restrictions on compiled executables.  If you do that, you kill a compiler.