Build of 1.0.10 is much smaller than 1.0.8 Have I done something wrong?

[rwmills]

System: Linux Mint 21.3

Current version of ksh93 is: AJM 93u+m/1.0.8 2024-01-01
$ whereis ksh93
ksh93: /usr/bin/ksh93 /usr/share/man/man1/ksh93.1.gz
$ ls -ltr /usr/bin/ksh93
-rwxrwxr-x 1 robert robert 1.3M Apr 3 2024 /usr/bin/ksh93*

New version of ksh is: AJM 93u+m/1.0.10 2024-08-01
$ whereis ksh
ksh: /usr/bin/ksh /usr/share/ksh /usr/share/man/man1/ksh.1 /usr/share/man/man1/ksh.1.gz
$ ls -ltr /usr/bin/ksh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 16K Jun 19 17:31 /usr/bin/ksh*

I made NO changes to src/cmd/ksh93/SHOPT.sh or set any compiler flags when I built both versions so am confused as to why the massive difference in size of the compiled program.

bin/package test said that none of the tests failed.

The install command used was: sudo bin/package install /

Supplementary question: How do I get it to install as ksh93?

[JohnoKing]

This is likely the result of the ksh 1.0.8 statically linking against libast and other libraries, whereas 1.0.9 and 1.0.10 dynamically link against libast.so. The decrease in the file size of /usr/bin/ksh should be accompanied by new libshell.so, libast.so, libcmd.so and libdll.so libraries.

# dynamically-linked 1.0.10 libraries
$ ldd /usr/bin/ksh
	linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fa8b88d3000)
	libshell.so.4 => /usr/lib/libshell.so.4 (0x00007fa8b87bc000)
	libast.so.8 => /usr/lib/libast.so.8 (0x00007fa8b86e6000)
	libcmd.so.4 => /usr/lib/libcmd.so.4 (0x00007fa8b86a7000)
	libdll.so.4 => /usr/lib/libdll.so.4 (0x00007fa8b86a0000)
	libm.so.6 => /usr/lib/libm.so.6 (0x00007fa8b85d1000)
	libmd.so.0 => /usr/lib/libmd.so.0 (0x00007fa8b85c0000)
	libc.so.6 => /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007fa8b8200000)
	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 => /usr/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fa8b88d5000)

All of the new .so libraries are statically linked into the 1.0.8 binary, whereas starting with 1.0.9+ dynamically linked ksh is installed by default.

[JohnoKing]

Supplementary question: How do I get it to install as ksh93?

Create a relative symbolic link for that:

# Using GNU coreutils or uutils 'ln -r'
$ sudo ln -sr /usr/bin/ksh /usr/bin/ksh93

The bin/package script probably should be changed to do this by default (but without the non-portable ln -r).

[rwmills]

Thanks for the info. I notice that there are differences between your ldd list and mine. Is there something else I need to do?

$ ldd /usr/bin/ksh
linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffc13fd3000)
libshell.so.2 => /lib/libshell.so.2 (0x00007fd8df258000)
libast.so.6 => /lib/libast.so.6 (0x00007fd8df183000)
libcmd.so.2 => /lib/libcmd.so.2 (0x00007fd8df146000)
libdll.so.2 => /lib/libdll.so.2 (0x00007fd8df13e000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007fd8df057000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007fd8dee2e000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fd8df31a000)

[JohnoKing]

Ksh will optionally link against libmd if it's available, which I presume is for the rather obscure cksum and md5sum builtins (which can be loaded with builtin -f cmd cksum md5sum if you're using a dynamically linked ksh). Ksh functionality aside from those builtins should work fine without libmd though.