On Thu, Mar 8, 2018 at 10:40 AM, Michał Górny <mgo...@gentoo.org> wrote: > > So, developers, please *stop adding USE=static-libs* to random libraries > that have no reason whatever to be statically linked to. And by that I > mean a good reason, not creeping featurism, not 'user asked for it', not > 'this broken package hardcodes libfoo.a'. >
While I agree with all the arguments against using static libs, this seems a bit contrary to the spirit of Gentoo. Certainly building static libs shouldn't be the default. However, if for some reason a user feels they need static libs, do we really need to make them jump through a million hoops simply because maybe we wouldn't do the same thing in their shoes? Why not just let maintainers add support if they wish, and neither require them to do so nor prohibit or discourage them? Now, if a package requires static linking that should be considered a bug, except where it really does make sense (bootloaders, kernels, firmware, etc). If a package installs static libs by default this should generally also be a bug. IMO this is not a feature that causes harm simply by being available. It isn't like a dialog box that has 500 boxes to hunt through. This is a global use flag that everybody understands, and which defaults to off. Keep in mind also that a lot of people use Gentoo in weird niches, and flexibility is our main selling point. Our users shouldn't have to beg to have use cases supported if it is easy to support them, just because their use cases are rare. If we excluded all rare use cases from Gentoo we'd probably exclude just about all of them in practice, because if somebody just wanted Ubuntu or CentOS or Debian they'd be using Ubuntu or CentOS or Debian. Just my own two cents here. -- Rich
