Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 5th Nov 2009 23:05 UTC
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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RE[10]: Always On the Cards
by segedunum on Tue 10th Nov 2009 12:33
in reply to "RE[9]: Always On the Cards"
Member since:2005-07-06
I thought fat binaries only deal with shipping multiple versions of the executable (as opposed to static vs. dynamic bundling of libraries).
It deals with multiple platform versions of executables (should you actually choose to support different platforms) and also deals with dynamic linking with help from the operating system. It takes at least some of the guesswork out of what is available in the system to dynamically link against, but then again, in some distributions some things might be there and in others some might not. However, at least FatELF provides a mechanism for finding that out and possibly doing something about it.
For closed source software, static linking is bit of a non-starter anyway, because of licensing issues.
That is definitely a very important part of why static linking is not a particularly great solution for everything that I hadn't pointed out.
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Member since:
2008-12-26
Because they support one installation platform that has wide distribution support. It's an absolute no brainer. They're not writing their own scripts now ar they unsure about what their dependencies are when they are troubleshooting an issue. "
I thought fat binaries only deal with shipping multiple versions of the executable (as opposed to static vs. dynamic bundling of libraries). For closed source software, static linking is bit of a non-starter anyway, because of licensing issues.