[arch-general] Libraries should also be built statically

[Allan McRae]

On 01/02/10 22:11, Heiko Baums wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I had this issue only twice by now, but I think this is a general
> problem.
>
> In the recent times libraries in the repos are only built dynamically
> while the statical versions are disabled.
>
> This can lead to several problems if someone needs to compile a program
> and needs to link statically against a library. This is not possible
> with only dynamical libraries. So people are not able to compile their
> programs unless they rebuild the necessay libraries from ABS.
>
> This is much worse with AUR packages which are compiled and installed
> by several other people.
>
> This issue was at least in freetype2 and is now in libjpeg. In
> freetype2 this was fixed. I hope in libjpeg this will also be fixed.
>
> See these feature requests:
> http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/11016
> http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/18106
>
> I could file such a feature request for every single package I find,
> but I think this should be a general rule to build libraries not only
> dynamically but also statically. This would avoid breakages of other
> packages even if AUR is unofficial and save time. And it doesn't take
> much disk space because it's usually only a small additional file.

I disagree.  Static libraries generally suck and hide rebuilds needed 
for security issues.  So unless something specifically needs the static 
library, I think it should be removed.

Allan