Re: Compiling "static" applications with SWT/GTK

[Andrew Haley <aph at redhat dot com>]

Steve D. Perkins writes:
 > 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.

It's there because dynamic linkage isn't supported on every system.

 > 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".

It can't be done.  I have explained why it can't be done on several
occasions.

Andrew.