Static executables

Tue Jan 31 12:38:00 GMT 2006

Andrzej Bialecki writes:
 > Tom Tromey wrote:
 > >>>>>> "Andrzej" == Andrzej Bialecki <ab@getopt.org> writes:
 > >>>>>> 
 > >
 > > Andrzej> The question is: is it possible to build static binaries on Linux/BSD,
 > > Andrzej> and if yes, what is the right incantation to do this, for input files
 > > Andrzej> consisting of a mix of *.java, *.jar, and JNI *.o objects? Eg. if I'm
 > > Andrzej> using Fedora Core 4, which sports gcc 4.0.2, whenever I try to pass
 > > Andrzej> the -static flag, the compiler complains that static compilation is
 > > Andrzej> not supported.
 > >
 > > Funny, I didn't realize that this error was in there.
 > > I don't remember this decision.
 > >
 > > Andrzej> * it's not supported, because it's broken in some well-defined cases
 > >
 > > Any code that uses reflection will not work properly. This is a
 > > problem because parts of the core class library depend on reflection.
 > > For instance, character set translators and locales are loaded this
 > > way.
 > 
 > Ugh, that's pretty serious ... Ok, then this means that it's not 
 > possible to redistribute binaries to machines where there is no runtime 
 > installation. :-( Or at least not as a single file.
I don't get it.
Why is that an issue? Surely you can wrap your application and
whatever libraries it requires in a package and distribute that.
Andrew.