Static linking vs dynamic linking

Question

Are there any compelling performance reasons to choose static linking over dynamic linking or vice versa in certain situations? I\'ve heard or read the following, but I don\

Answer 1

One reason to do a statically linked build is to verify that you have full closure for the executable, i.e. that all symbol references are resolved correctly.

As a part of a large system that was being built and tested using continuous integration, the nightly regression tests were run using a statically linked version of the executables. Occasionally, we would see that a symbol would not resolve and the static link would fail even though the dynamically linked executable would link successfully.

This was usually occurring when symbols that were deep seated within the shared libs had a misspelt name and so would not statically link. The dynamic linker does not completely resolve all symbols, irrespective of using depth-first or breadth-first evaluation, so you can finish up with a dynamically linked executable that does not have full closure.