Re: fully supporting static linking in NetBSD (ar "zero" flag)

[David Brownlee <abs%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

        Whether existing features in NetBSD contine to be supported is
        probably down:
        1) Do people have the time and interest to maintain the feature
        2) The cost in complication and effort to keep the feature
        3) Is there any viable alternative

        For example, NetBSD dropped 80386 support because it stopped
        working without any really noticing for quite some time,
        noone stepped forward to fix it, and removing the support
        reduced the time and effort required to maintain and extend
        the i386 port. So as a direct consequence of explicitly
        dropping 80386 support NetBSD 5.0 will be faster and scale
        better on 80468 and higher processors.

        There are various aspects of support for static linking:

        a) Basic static linking of base system, enough to boot multiuser
        b) Features which currently only work on dynamic systems - i18n/PAM
        c) Building pkgsrc against a staticly linked system
        d) Building staticly linked tools

        We obviously have several people willing to commit to a),
        and providing Greg and others can roll forward their patches
        hopefully we can get some of the others also addressed.
        The key is in minimising the cost in complication and effort
        for keeping the various static linking support functional.

        So... does anyone have references to PRs with reasonable sized
        patches which apply to current? :)

--
                David/absolute       -- www.NetBSD.org: No hype required --