844880 - Allow to build the main NSS libraries as static libraries

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(NSS :: Build, defect, P2)

Description

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

Currently, the static libraries built under security/nss are subparts of nss3, smime3, ssl3 and nssutil3. It would be useful to be able to build nss3, smime3, ssl3 and nssutil3 as "complete" static libraries.

Comment 1

[Ryan Sleevi]

Is this a dupe of bug #534471 ? If not, how is it distinct?

Comment 2

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

(In reply to Ryan Sleevi from comment #1)
> Is this a dupe of bug #534471 ? If not, how is it distinct?

It's a subset of bug 534471.

Comment 3

[Martin Thomson [:mt:]]

Adding Edouard and Ryan and tweaking priority.

On some platforms like iOS, loading a dynamic library incurs a performance overhead. It also drives the binary size up. Static linking might help this a little, even if the PKCS#11 interface will force certain symbols to be present even when they aren't used.

Static linking to the "top level" libraries as described here is likely what we'll want to use. We can explore whether or not to statically link freebl and softoken as well, though that might be best done in stages. There are some changes with --test/test_build that might be used to help here.

This would not be the default build configuration, but it should be enabled through a build flag.

Comment 4

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

Note that Firefox already folds nss, smime, ssl and nssutil into one library.

Comment 5

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

Note that Firefox already folds nss, smime, ssl and nssutil into one library.

Is this something we can easily replicate when building NSS standalone?

Comment 6

[Edouard Oger [:eoger]]

I believe the flag MOZ_FOLD_LIBS can be used, however in the dylib case since there's no stripping you'll be shipping ssl/sqlite as well.

Comment 7

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

These are the knobs Firefox sets:
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/69ace9da347adcc4a33c6fa3d8e074759b91068c/security/moz.build#42-50

... I guess this means this bug, as filed, is already fixed to some extent.

Comment 8

[Edouard Oger [:eoger]]

I believe there is a misunderstanding here, we still want to statically link against libnss.
Comment 6 Comment 7 are good intermediate states for iOS to ship less dylibs, but ultimately we'd rather statically link.

Comment 9

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

Well, the bug I filed 6 years ago is fixed. I don't know what you want more, but that's not what I filed this bug for.