From: John Caywood (caywood@wyvern.wyvern.com)
Date: 04/12/93


From: caywood@wyvern.wyvern.com (John Caywood)
Subject: Re: The dangers of playing with shared libraries
Date: 13 Apr 1993 01:57:41 GMT

Steve VanDevender (stevev@miser.uoregon.edu) wrote:

 [ stuff deleted ]

: in to fix the problem, I would like to _strongly_ suggest that
: 'ln' be statically linked or that a statically linked version of
: 'ln' be made available in the distribution so that it is possible
: to recover from this mistake the obvious way.

I second the motion. I got bit installing gcc486 instead of the gcc386
that came with SLS 0.99pl2. 'ln' is not the only candidate for static
linking -- I can think of ls, mv, and (maybe) cat in the same got-to-have-it
category. I can't see it if I can't 'ls'; if I can 'mv' it, I don't need
to 'rm' it; I can't inspect it if I can't 'cat' it, and if I can 'cat' it,
I can also copy it, so I don't need cp to be statically linked. I don't
need 'cd' and 'pwd' because they're (usually) built into the shell. Of
course, if I blow away my shell....

Any other opinions on a minimal set of statically-linked utilities?

-- 
 "If you've always done it that way, it's probably wrong"
 --------------------------------------attributed to Edward Kettering
 John Caywood, aspiring Linux S.A.,    ! caywood@wyvern.wyvern.com
         vi bigot, and wine drinker    ! J.S.Caywood@LaRC.NASA.GOV