[Ffmpeg-devel] [RFC] dlopen vs linking for external libraries

[Uoti Urpala]

On Tue, 2007-02-27 at 08:11 -0800, Roman Shaposhnik wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-02-27 at 03:59 +0200, Uoti Urpala wrote:
> > Yes there's no common standard between all the distros, and you have to
> > use all kinds of kludges if you insist on using a single binary on all
> > of them. So exactly what are you arguing for here? That the distros
> > should use the same level of kludginess internally?
> 
>   No. I was merely arguing two things:
> 
>     1. dynamic loading is underrated and should be considered more by
>        software writers.
>  
>     2. dynamic linking is overrated and it *DOES NOT* solve the problems
>        of managing dependencies efficiently
> 
>   If we agree on both accounts -- there's nothing to argue about
> anymore, its just that your initial emails (the conversation with 
> Michael in particular) made me think that you have a reason to
> disagree.

The discussion originally started from complaints about how _distros_
use dynamic linking in _their_ packages (specifically about the large
number of dependencies even when those can be automatically installed by
the distro package management). I gave some reasons why the way they
work makes sense for the distros and why moving to dynamic loading of
(possibly optional) libraries would likely be a net loss for the
distros. Your later reply that focused on problems that _non-distro_
binary packages have with dynamic libraries seemed somewhat disconnected
from what you were replying to.

So I still think that the way distros use dynamic libraries makes sense
(well maybe some distros do it badly too...). If you have problems using
dynamic libraries in cross-distro binaries in the current environment
that's not really relevant to my point.