A media packaging and development framework for VOD and Live DASH and HLS applications, supporting Common Encryption for Widevine and other DRM Systems.
This adds the option FULLY_STATIC to create fully-static executables.
To create portable, fully-static release executables on Linux, we need to use musl instead of glibc. Static executables from glibc are not portable.
The popular musl-gcc wrapper does not support C++, so instead we use a full musl cross-compiler toolchain in the build workflow.
To build FULLY_STATIC, the user must point to the appropriate cross-compiler, as we do in the workflow. On systems where musl is the native libc (such as Alpine Linux), this is not necessary.
I have also read that musl's allocator is not very fast in multi-threaded applications. So when FULLY_STATIC is enabled, we will also enable mimalloc, a replacement allocator that is very fast.
I tested a very basic packaging command to compare speeds of dynamic glibc, static musl, and static musl+mimalloc:
The mimalloc build is 82% faster than musl default allocator, 77% faster than glibc, and has more consistent runtime characteristics (lower standard deviation).
This adds the option FULLY_STATIC to create fully-static executables.
To create portable, fully-static release executables on Linux, we need to use musl instead of glibc. Static executables from glibc are not portable.
The popular musl-gcc wrapper does not support C++, so instead we use a full musl cross-compiler toolchain in the build workflow.
To build FULLY_STATIC, the user must point to the appropriate cross-compiler, as we do in the workflow. On systems where musl is the native libc (such as Alpine Linux), this is not necessary.
I have also read that musl's allocator is not very fast in multi-threaded applications. So when FULLY_STATIC is enabled, we will also enable mimalloc, a replacement allocator that is very fast.
I tested a very basic packaging command to compare speeds of dynamic glibc, static musl, and static musl+mimalloc:
dynamic glibc: runs: 2.527, 2.798, 2.703, 2.756, 2.959 avg = 2.749, std dev = 0.156s
static musl: runs: 2.813, 2.920, 3.129, 3.003, 2.738 avg = 2.921s, std dev = 0.154s
static musl+mimalloc: runs: 2.291, 2.034, 2.415, 2.303, 2.265 avg = 2.262s, std dev = 0.140s
The mimalloc build is 82% faster than musl default allocator, 77% faster than glibc, and has more consistent runtime characteristics (lower standard deviation).