Re: bignum branch

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>> libc and libm are dynamically linked and are essential for Emacs Lisp.
> That's a strawman I didn't expect to see from you.

I personally don't see why libc/libm is not a good example for libgmp.

>> Some GNU/Linux distributions don't even fully support static linking
>> any more, for security reasons.
> Really?  But we do link to Gnulib statically, so it sounds like the
> platforms we care about do still support static linking, and probably
> will for the observable future, right?

I don't think any GNU/Linux distribution prevents anyone from using
static linking directly.  I think what Paul meant is that some GNU/Linux
distributions don't provide library packages with the .a files any more:
you only get the .h and the .so.  But if you compile the library on your
own (as we do for gnulib and lwlib), then the tools fully support static
linking of course.

So under GNU/Linux we can statically link to a libgmp if we distribute
that libgmp's source code with Emacs, but otherwise we may be forced to
use dynamic linking.


        Stefan