GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool
by Gary V. Vaughan, Ben Elliston, Tom Tromey, Ian Lance Taylor
1.5. Libtool Development
Over time, Unix systems added support for shared libraries.
Conventional libraries, or static libraries, are linked into a program image. This means that each program that uses a static library includes some or all of the library in the program binary on disk.
Shared libraries, on the other hand, are separate files. A program that uses a shared library does not include a copy of the library; it includes only the name of the library. Many programs can use a single shared library.
Using a shared library reduces disk-space requirements. Because the system can generally share a single executable instance of the shared library among many programs, it also reduces swap-space requirements at runtime. Another advantage is that ...
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