Re: Reducing git size by building libgit.so

["brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>]

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On 2019-06-11 at 19:52:18, Elmar Pruesse wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> The total compiled size of libexec/git-core is currently somewhere
> around 30 MB. This is largely due to a number of binaries linking
> statically against libgit.a. For some folks, every byte counts. I
> meddled with the Makefile briefly to make it build and use a libgit.so
> instead, which dropped package size down to 5MB.
> 
> Are there, beyond the ~20 ms in extra startup time and the slightly
> bigger hassle with DSO locations, reasons for the choice to link statically?

I think the reason is that libgit is not API stable and we definitely
don't want people linking against it. Before libgit2 existed, projects
like cgit built their own libgit and it required pinning to a specific
version of Git.

Also, some people install Git into their home directories, and a shared
library means that they'll have to use LD_LIBRARY_PATH (or equivalent)
to run Git.

Finally, we have support for a runtime relocatable Git which can be run
out of any path and still automatically find its dependent binaries.
That won't work with a shared library.

So if we did allow for building a shared library, it would have to be an
option that defaulted to off, I think.
-- 
brian m. carlson: Houston, Texas, US
OpenPGP: https://keybase.io/bk2204

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