The following bug has been logged online:

Bug reference: 1412
Logged by: Todd Eigenschink
Email address: todd@tekinteractive.com
PostgreSQL version: 8 (any recent)
Operating system: Linux
Description: binaries are linked to numerous extraneous shared
Details:

For a long time, Postgres binaries have been linked to numerous extraneous
shared libraries. Since the same command line is used for all tools, it's
no surprise.

I asked for that to be cleaned up a long time ago and offered a tool to do
it, but nobody ever took me up on the suggestion.

I wrote a tool that works like this:

../configure --prefix=$PREFIX
make
make install
relink-postgres $PREFIX
make install

The relink rebuilds the binaries in the source tree based on what it finds
in $PREFIX/bin. It just tries to remove shared libraries and relink until
it gets down to the minimal set of libs that will permit the link to
succeed.

This will probably be mangled. I'll be glad to mail it on request. Sample
output:

Relinking src/bin/psql/psql
Successfully removed: -lz -lcrypt -lresolv -lnsl -ldl -lm

Relinking src/bin/scripts/vacuumdb
Successfully removed: -lz -lreadline -lncurses -lcrypt -lresolv -lnsl -ldl
-lm



#!/bin/sh

minlibs_script=/tmp/minlibs.pl.$$
dir=$1

################################################## ####################

cat <<'EOF' > $minlibs_script
$| = 1;

my @cmd = @ARGV;

print "Successfully removed:";

while (1)
{
my @before_cmd = @cmd;

for (my $i = 1; $i < @cmd; $i++)
{
next unless $cmd[$i] =~ /^-l/;

my @tmp = @cmd;
splice @tmp, $i, 1;

system(join(' ', @tmp, '>/dev/null', '2>&1'));

if ($? == 0)
{
# Success.
print " $cmd[$i]";
@cmd = @tmp;
last;
}
}

# Bail if no changes were made in this pass.
last if @cmd == @before_cmd;
}

if (@cmd == @ARGV)
{
print "nothing.\n";
}
else
{
print "\n";
}

# Execute it one last time to recreate whatever binary we might have
killed.
system(@cmd);
EOF

################################################## ####################

for binary in $dir/bin/*; do

ldd $binary 2>&1 | grep -q 'not a dynamic executable' && continue

file=`basename $binary`
[ "$file" = "postmaster" ] && continue

path=`find src -type f -name $file`
bindir=`dirname $path`

echo "Relinking $bindir/$file"
if [ "$bindir" = "" ]; then
echo "No directory!"
exit 1
fi

rm $path
gcccmd=`make 2>&1 | grep -- "-o $file"`
#echo "gcc cmd = " $gcccmd

(cd $bindir && perl $minlibs_script $gcccmd)

echo

done

rm $minlibs_script

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