[Slackbuilds-users] mupdf and dynamic vs. static linking

[B Watson]

On 6/23/18, Thomas Morper <thomas at beingboiled.info> wrote:
>
> By default the mupdf software package builds and links against a static
> library, resulting in a 123MB txz package containing several 33MB
> executables.
>
> The LFS project has a patch that applies cleanly and switches to a dynamic
> build, resulting in a much more sensible 20MB txz package.

When I first took over mupdf (20130618, version 1.2), I patched it so
it built shared libraries. About a year later, upgraded to 1.5 and the
patches no longer applied. Contacted upstream, and they told me they
strongly disapprove of shared libs.

At the time I decided it wasn't worth the effort: 1.5 was newly released,
I couldn't find anyone else's patches to use, and my own attempts failed.
Decided to take upstream's advice.

In 1.5, libmupdf.a was 10MB and the 4 executables were 9MB each. Bloated,
but not so bad. Now the library is 47MB and there are 7 exes at 33MB
each, and the tgz package has grown from 23MB to 178MB. So yeah, the
bloat factor is getting out of hand.

(In case you're wondering why all the verbose history stuff: My initial
reaction was "no" and I started writing that to convince you why I
wasn't going to patch it... while writing it, I convinced myself you
were right instead!)

> Could the LFS patch be added to the SlackBuild?

Yes. Do they generally update their patch pretty soon after a new mupdf
release?