Star Ryan Gordon Halts FatELF Project
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 5th Nov 2009 23:05 UTC
Linux As we all know, Mac OS X has support for what is called 'fat binaries'. These are binaries that can carry code for for instance multiple architectures - in the case of the Mac, PowerPC and x86. Ryan Gordon was working on an implementation of fat binaries for Linux - but due to the conduct of the Linux maintainers, Gordon has halted the effort.
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vivainio
Member since:
2008-12-26


"
- Bugfixes. If a security vulnerability is fixed in a library, every app benefits without having to be updated.


Meanwhile, every app using that lib is vulnerable. Congrats!
"

I don't see the logic here. If there is a bug in frobbo-1.1.0 that is fixed by frobbo-1.1-1, your apps will be vulnerable until the shared library gets updated. If all your apps bundle their own copy of frobbo-1.1-0, all the apps will remain vulnerable until they ship a patch of their own.

What a killer feature! Meanwhile, other systems like MacOSX can exist on small mobile devices quite well despite universal binaries. Of course, you can strip unwanted architectures from universal binaries.


We're not talking about universal binaries here, but bundling shared libs with the apps vs. providing them centrally. Bloat caused by universal binaries is miniscule in comparison.

Fully agree with the first poster. Somehow Linux people always come up with good reasons for server or mobile devices that makes it impossible to adopt something that would be user friendly for a desktop situation - and then, they wonder why "the year of Linux on the desktop" still has not arrived ..


Universal binaries don't really make things better for desktop users - just supporting i386 is enough for that segment.

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