Shared libraries

Why do some apps like Chrome and Firefox have tiny main executables and pack everything in a big shared library that contains everything? It's not like there are other users of the library, and at least on some systems executables should perform a bit better (no risk of needing to be relocated on load).

Other big programs do the logical thing and provide a large executable and no shared libraries. I have even seen some that changed the policy from version to version. What I'm asking is why would you put anything that is only used by a single program outside the executable.

>>1,10

Think of it like this.  When you click a link in a document, and there is no browser open, the browser will launch and go to the URL.  If there is a browser, a new tab is made.

If the executable only has launch code, it can decide if it needs to load the library again, or just tell the existing process to open a tab.

Also, in the future, /prog/ is a really bad place to ask serious questions.