[Xastir] Executable sizes, internal/external Shapelib

Curt, WE7U archer at eskimo.com
Mon Nov 13 11:03:02 EST 2006


On Mon, 13 Nov 2006, Tom Russo wrote:

> Yep.  Now that you point that out I'm seeing pretty much the same thing on
> FreeBSD.  In fact, I also see the same thing you're seeing in that the
> dynamically linked version is slightly larger than the static-linked version.
>
> This is a little strange, as one of the points of shared libraries is to
> reduce executable size.  But I guess that shapelib functions are just so
> small that the overhead for handling the shared libraries is big enough
> to erase the savings.

Yea.  I did this on my laptop and the statically-linked version was
smaller.  The routines are _very_ small so I think you figured it
out.


> I still stand by the points I made about bloating the code base and statically
> linking too many libraries (especially big ones).  But perhaps it is OK to
> use the static linked shapelib unless you need shapelib for something other
> than xastir (e.g. GPSMAN/gpsmanshp), at which point you need to install
> shapelib as a shared library anyway.

That's exactly how I'm thinking of it.  Those that only need
Xastir/Shapelib would most likely choose not to install the separate
library.  It only make sense from a keep-it-simple perspective.

Thanks for your work on getting that integrated in!  It's pretty
seamless and I think a lot of people will benefit from it.

--
Curt, WE7U.   APRS Client Comparisons: http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
"Lotto:    A tax on people who are bad at math." -- unknown
"Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates." -- WE7U
"The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"



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