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Date:   Mon, 3 May 2021 10:54:35 -0400
From:   "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
To:     "Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro@orcam.me.uk>
Cc:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
        Tom Stellard <tstellar@redhat.com>,
        Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>,
        Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>,
        Nathan Chancellor <nathan@kernel.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        clang-built-linux <clang-built-linux@googlegroups.com>,
        Fangrui Song <maskray@google.com>,
        Serge Guelton <sguelton@redhat.com>,
        Sylvestre Ledru <sylvestre@mozilla.com>
Subject: Re: Very slow clang kernel config ..
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On Mon, May 03, 2021 at 10:38:12AM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Mon, May 03, 2021 at 03:03:31AM +0200, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:
> > 
> > People went through great efforts to support shared libraries, sacrificed
> > performance for it even back then when the computing power was much lower
> > than nowadays.
> 
> That was because memory was *incredibly* restrictive in those days.
> My first Linux server had one gig of memory, and so shared libraries
> provided a huge performance boost --- because otherwise systems would
> be swapping or paging their brains out.

Correction.  My bad, my first Linux machine had 16 megs of memory....

	     	      	    	    	   - Ted

> 
> However, these days, many if not most developers aren't capable of the
> discpline needed to maintained the ABI stability needed for shared
> libraries to work well.  I can think several packages where if you
> used shared libraries, the major version number would need to be
> bumped at every releases, because people don't know how to spell ABI,
> never mind be able to *preserve* ABI.  Heck, it's the same reason that
> we don't promise kernel ABI compatibility for kernel modules!
> 
> https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/process/stable-api-nonsense.rst
> 
> And in the case of Debian, use of shared libraries means that every
> time you release a new version of, say, f2fs-tools, things can get
> stalled for months or in one case, over a year, due to the new package
> review process (a shared library version bump means a new binary
> package, and that in turn requires a full review of the entire source
> package for GPL compliance from scratch, and f2fs-tools has bumped
> their shared library major version *every* *single* *release*) ---
> during which time, security bug fixes were being held up due to the
> new package review tarpit.
> 
> If people could actually guarantee stable ABI's, then shared libraries
> might make sense.  E2fsprogs hasn't had a major version bump in shared
> libraries for over a decade (although some developers whine and
> complain about how I reject function signature changes in the
> libext2fs library to provide that ABI stability).  But how many
> userspace packages can make that claim?
> 
> 	  	       	    	 - Ted