[RFC] Un-staticise the toolchain

[Tim Kientzle]

On Apr 30, 2012, at 6:41 AM, Erik Cederstrand wrote:
> 
> Can anyone explain to me why the dynamically linked version is significantly slower? What are the extra steps involved compared to a statically linked binary?

At the risk of dramatically over-simplifying….

When a static binary is started by the kernel, it does the following:
  * Initializes some libc internals.
  * Calls main.

When a dynamic binary is started by the kernel, it does the following:
  * Initializes some libc internals.
  * For every dynamic library referenced by this executable:
       - loads the dynamic library into memory
       - fixes up references
  * Calls main

The process of loading the required libraries and fixing up references
can be quite time-consuming.

Cheers,

Tim