Re: bignum branch

[Paul Eggert]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> I don't see why managing the library matters here, since linking
> statically makes sure Emacs always uses the same library against which
> it was linked.

That's exactly what we don't want, at least not on a well-managed system like 
Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc. where we will want the standard libgmp that everybody 
uses. These GNUish systems are very good about maintaining compatibility when 
libraries like libgmp change.

> Other projects link statically against libraries without any issues.
> See GDB, for example.

No, on the systems that I'm talking about, GDB links dynamically against libgmp. 
As does GCC and every other GNU package I know. There are good reasons for this, 
and Emacs shouldn't try to fight them. If MS-Windows has a different tradition 
then fine, Emacs can use static linking on MS-Windows. But Emacs should not use 
static linking on GNU/Linux distributions, or on other POSIXish systems.