[01669da] | 1 | <sect1 id="ch05-whystatic">
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| 2 | <title>Why do we use static linking?</title>
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| 3 | <?dbhtml filename="whystatic.html" dir="chapter05"?>
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| 4 |
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| 5 | <para>Thanks to Plasmatic for posting the text on which this is mainly
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| 6 | based to one of the LFS mailing lists.</para>
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| 7 |
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| 8 | <para>When making (compiling) a program, rather than having to rewrite all the
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[76c0b78] | 9 | functions for dealing with the kernel, hardware, files, etc. every time you
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[01669da] | 10 | write a new program, all these basic functions are instead kept in libraries.
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[fe57863] | 11 | glibc, which you install later, is one of these major libraries, which
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| 12 | contains code for all the basic functions programs use, like opening files,
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| 13 | printing information on the screen, and getting feedback from the user. When
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| 14 | the program is compiled, these libraries of code are linked together with the
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| 15 | new program, so that it can use any of the functions that the library
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[01669da] | 16 | has.</para>
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| 17 |
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[762603e] | 18 | <para>However, these libraries can be very large (for example, libc.a
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[fe57863] | 19 | can often be around 2.5MB), so you may not want a separate copy of each
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| 20 | library attached to the program. Just imagine if you had a simple command
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| 21 | like ls with an extra 2.5MB attached to it! Instead of making the library
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| 22 | an actual part of the program, or statically linked, the library is kept a
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| 23 | separate file, which is loaded only when the program needs it. This is what
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| 24 | we call dynamically linked, as the library is loaded and unloaded dynamically,
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| 25 | as the program needs it.</para>
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[01669da] | 26 |
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| 27 | <para>So now we have a 1kb file and a 2.5MB file, but we still haven't saved any
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| 28 | space (except maybe RAM until the library is needed). The REAL advantage to
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| 29 | dynamically linked libraries is that we only need one copy of the library.
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[b5b4c76] | 30 | If <filename>ls</filename> and <filename>rm</filename> both use the same
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[01669da] | 31 | library, then we don't need two copies of the
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| 32 | library, as they can both get the code from the same file.
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| 33 | Even when in memory, both programs share the same code, rather than loading
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| 34 | duplicates into memory. So not only are we saving hard disk space, but also
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| 35 | precious RAM.</para>
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| 36 |
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| 37 | <para>If dynamic linking saves so much room, then why are we making everything
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| 38 | statically linked? Well, that's because when you chroot into your brand new
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| 39 | (but very incomplete) LFS environment, these dynamic libraries won't be
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| 40 | available because they are somewhere else in your old directory tree
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| 41 | (<filename>/usr/lib</filename> for example) which won't be accessible
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| 42 | from within your LFS root (<filename>$LFS</filename>).</para>
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| 43 |
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| 44 | <para>So in order for your new programs to run inside the chroot environment you
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| 45 | need to make sure that the libraries are statically linked when you build
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| 46 | them, hence the <userinput>--enable-static-link</userinput>,
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| 47 | <userinput>--disable-shared</userinput>, and
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| 48 | <userinput>-static</userinput> flags used
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| 49 | through Chapter 5. Once in Chapter 6, the first thing we do is build the
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| 50 | main set of system libraries, glibc. Once this is made we start rebuilding
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| 51 | all the programs we just did in Chapter 5, but this time dynamically linked,
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[76c0b78] | 52 | so that we can take advantage of the space saving opportunities.</para>
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[01669da] | 53 |
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| 54 | <para>And there you have it, that's why you need to use those weird
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| 55 | <userinput>-static</userinput> flags. If you try building everything
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| 56 | without them, you'll see very quickly what
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| 57 | happens when you chroot into your newly crippled LFS system.</para>
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| 58 |
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| 59 | <para>If you want to know more about Dynamically Linked Libraries, consult a
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| 60 | book or website on programming, especially a Linux-related site.</para>
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| 61 |
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| 62 | </sect1>
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