Fedora Stakeholders Debate Statically Linking Python For Better Performance

[pal666]

If there is something that needs all performance it can get it's stuff using python.
Even fffffing Java is faster

how about bash? i'm sure someone can come up with tests which are faster on statically linked bash

[coder]

Instead of wrestling with this dilemma for libraries on a case-by-case basis, wouldn't it be nice if the loader could cache libraries & executables after relocation, so we could get the best of both worlds?

[coder]

how about bash? i'm sure someone can come up with tests which are faster on statically linked bash

In that case, I think you hit a wall by the name of "GPL", which doesn't permit static linking (at least, not by non-GPL code).

[starshipeleven]

how about bash? i'm sure someone can come up with tests which are faster on statically linked bash

Bash is not used for actual productive software and scientific work (not as the main payload logic anyway)

[coder]

I thought Fortran was the choice of many scientists???

Yes, in decades past.

These days, fortran seems to be a direct dependency only of older libraries, with not much new code being written in it.

[starshipeleven]

unless you are using lto/pgo like subj

Only a few performance-critical packages need that

[profoundWHALE]

Imagine having a program language become such a bottleneck that you decide to make it less safe to gain a few percentage points.

At this point you might as well leave it as is and slowly work on replacing those vital program bits with something that is hundreds of times faster.

[F.Ultra]

it doesn't work that way. for it someone has to globally decide which part of address space every library on machine takes, otherwise you'll have two libraries or library and executable clash. prelink tried to do that and prelink is obsolete. and that was even before address space layout randomization

Thanks, the VM is what I was forgetting. If we ignore ASLR however it should be possible to at least keep the same offsets even when the virtual memory changes for the new binary and then the calls could all use relative jumps which would make it work with a single pass at the first load.

[F.Ultra]

Imagine having a program language become such a bottleneck that you decide to make it less safe to gain a few percentage points.

At this point you might as well leave it as is and slowly work on replacing those vital program bits with something that is hundreds of times faster.

There is nothing in the proposal from Fedora that will make python less safe.

[profoundWHALE]

There is nothing in the proposal from Fedora that will make python less safe.

I'm not saying that the change would make them suddenly full of security holes. The change brings along some additional security concerns that have to do with versions of python.