On Wednesday, 9 January 2013 at 08:59:01 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
[...] whereas all dynamic linking really does is save disk
space.
Saving on disk space is a minor advantage. The main advantage is
allowing shared libs to be distributed without having to re-link
then in manually. For example, if a bug is fixed in a shared lib,
all applications automatically get the bug fix, but with
statically linked libs, you have to re-link all the apps that use
the lib to gain access to the bug fix. With static linking you
also have no easy way to ensure that your apps are all using the
most up-to-date version of a shared lib. Effectively, without
dynamic linking, collections of applications, such as operating
systems would be very difficult to deploy and maintain to the
point of being impractical.
D is simply a whole lot less useful without full dynamic runtime
linking.
--rt
