[LAD] Forgive me, for I have sinned, or: toss your Macintosh, as fast and wide as you can.

[Len Ovens]

On Sun, 10 Dec 2017, Markus Seeber wrote:

>> Bottom line: It turned out the Windows way of shipping all or most
>> libs with the program is a really good way to compatibility.
>
> Just employ static linking when sensible. There are less ways a linker can screw that up

Often policy gets in the way of sensible. Some examples:
- it would be sensible for debian packagers to include the "includes" with
 	both the jackd1 and jackd2 packages rather than separating out
 	to a *-dev package or at least name the jackd1 *-dev package so it
 	can not be confused for use with jackd2.
- it would be sensible if all plugins were packaged staticly linked but
 	policy says otherwise.

Audio production on Linux or for that matter on any OS, is a tiny portion 
of the total users which these policies are made for. Some distros may 
allow for exceptions to policy, but packaging already takes more effort 
than creating the software in the first place (at least the small 
utilities I have made so far), fighting some policy is just not worth it.

I think this is one place where it is easier for the developer to supply a 
staticly linked set of files with a script to install them. The user can 
download them there rather than expecting their distro to "get it right".

--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net