To: "Metin Ozisik" <metin@evincetek.com>
Cc: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Build issues: "-static" builds resulting initdb problems 
In-reply-to: <004301c54d52$f0ea4870$3401a8c0@pengu> 
References: <003a01c549e4$1485eea0$3401a8c0@pengu>
	<28245.1114835916@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<004301c54d52$f0ea4870$3401a8c0@pengu>
Comments: In-reply-to "Metin Ozisik" <metin@evincetek.com>
	message dated "Sat, 30 Apr 2005 00:04:36 -0700"
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 12:03:02 -0400
Message-ID: <1829.1114876982@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

"Metin Ozisik" <metin@evincetek.com> writes:
> The purpose of using static linking is to reduce dependencies to 
> shared-libraries (dependencies to different types and versions of Linux), so 
> an instance of postgreSQL, say built on Suse 9.0, would still work on 
> Mandrake 10.1. Yes it gets a bit bulky and have a number of disadvantages 
> over dynamic linking (on the plus side it would be a bit faster), however 
> the main motivater is binary portability.

Well, both the PL languages and the character set conversion support are
*only* buildable as shared libraries right now.  If you want to
statically link those into the main backend build, you can probably do
it, but it will take some nontrivial hacking.

In the meantime it would appear that your linker ignores the -E (export
all symbols) switch when -static is specified.  I suppose it thinks
that not only don't you want any shared libraries now, but you won't
want any dynamically loaded libraries later.  This is a Bad Idea;
complain to the linker hackers about it.

			regards, tom lane