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On Tue, Jan 16, 2007 at 12:12:58PM +0000, Phil Evans wrote: > > How do commercial software houses manage? Do they package all the > dependencies with their applications (perhaps this is why Adobe CS2 > is >5GB)? > Applications are either statically linked or a system is put in place that can manage (and resolve) dynamic dependencies. See the RPM/yum system for Redhat/Fedora (and any one of the other countless systems in place for the various linux distros), for an example of the latter. Static linking isn't without its problems, however: if an executable links against a flawed library, then the whole application needs to be upgraded, not just the library (this has happened many times in the past, for example a major security flaw in the PNG libraries that required patches applied to stuff like OS X, MS Office, Firefox and others). Here are some others: http://people.redhat.com/drepper/no_static_linking.html > The amount of work involved is one reason why CCP4 resisted for many > years the demand for distributing executables, and I do know that > Paul & Kevin have spent (wasted?) a lot of time on this. > I would be willing to gander that most issues related to dynamic linking are due to using a dynamically linked binary/library on a different system/environment, where all bets regarding the dynamic libraries are off. I'm a big fan of dynamic linking, but its not sensical to distribute a dynamically linked program without context to the libraries used to generate said program. What I'd propose is solid support for good build systems (e.g. toys like autoconf/automake/libtool and others), so most of the dependencies are either made available or are resolved prior to compilation, and then one can build the library/binary for any unix flavor (with whatever libraries, as long as they meet the requirements for the build to succeed and work properly). Its easy to go from there to the distribution systems available to that unix flavor, granted the license of the program is compatible. I know Donnie has done this for gentoo and some of the crystallography programs, and I would gladly do the same for fedora if the CCLRC license were OSI and/or FSF approved (in fact, I already have several crystallography packages in Fedora format at http://www.stanford.edu/~fenn/linux/packages). -Tim -- --------------------------------------------------------- Tim Fenn [EMAIL PROTECTED] Stanford University, School of Medicine James H. Clark Center 318 Campus Drive, Room E300 Stanford, CA 94305-5432 Phone: (650) 736-1714 FAX: (650) 736-1961 ---------------------------------------------------------
