Re: [MiNT] Software packaging (was: opkg / coldmint)

[Eero Tamminen <oak@helsinkinet.fi>]

Hi,

On maanantai 18 helmikuu 2013, Peter Slegg wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Feb 2013 23:19:55 , Eero Tamminen <oak@helsinkinet.fi> wrote:
> > On sunnuntai 17 helmikuu 2013, Helmut Karlowski wrote:
> > >> I can't see many instances of situations were users would be running
> > >> several apps that need the same lib so the memory used would not be
> > >> important.
> > > 
> > > Well, almost all would use the mintlib, no?
> > 
> > Any normal GCC compiled app would use mintlib, and GUI ones would
> > also use GEMlib.  That's 0.9MB + 0.2MB (for their *.a files
> > in Sparemint).
> 
> So the memory usage of static versus the dynamic solution would be the
> same and disk usage would be reduced (not a major issue).

Without on-demand file paging (which needs VM), the dynamic solution
would actually use more memory because you get the whole library into
memory, not just the parts used by the application (as would be the case
both with on-demand file paging and static linking).


> The advantage would be that no would would have to rebuild all the
> packages for all the variations everytime a lib is updated.

Yep.  But to avoid dependency rebuilds by good autobuilder, you
need also something that tracks ABI changes, as dependencies should
be rebuilt only on ABI changes.

There are tools for that for ELF binaries and e.g. Debian package
management uses those to track when libraries change their ABIs, and
to automatically set dependency to oldest version providing that ABI.


The main advantage would be applying security fixes by updating
single dynamic library which had the bug, instead of updating N
applications that were statically linking that lib.


	- Eero