[plt-scheme] back to --disable-shared

Bradd wrote:
>> Shared libraries scale better than static libraries. Many (most?)
>> modern operating systems arrange for them to share space in memory,
>> not just on disk, such that multiple processes using the same library
>> will consume fewer system resources.

Matthew Flatt wrote:
> If you embed MzScheme in many applications, there's a clear benefit.

Right.

> If you just run lots of MzScheme/MrEd-based applications, though, the
> MzScheme/MrEd executable gets shared, so there's no additional benefit
> in having a separate shared library, right?

It depends on whether the program loader is as smart as the dynamic
library loader. (On some systems, it may be smarter.) Unfortunately, I'm
not close to our loader team anymore, so I don't have access to any
quick answers there.

However, another one of our engineers pointed out that the Unix world is
phasing out static archive support. HP has been slowly obsoleting them
for years on HP-UX for PA-RISC, and IIRC there's even less support for
static archives on HP-UX for Itanium. Likewise, the GNU autoconf and
autolib suites have been discouraging static archives for a while.
Windows was more aggressive about moving to shared libraries, but the
Unix world is headed in that direction too, so it's just a matter of
time before static archives aren't viable anywhere in the microcomputer
world.
-- 
Bradd W. Szonye
http://www.szonye.com/bradd