Fedora Stakeholders Debate Statically Linking Python For Better Performance

A surprisingly controversial proposal for Fedora 32 is to shift from dynamically linking Python 3 with the libpython3.X.so library to static linking. The change can yield double digit percentage improvements to Python scripts but at the cost of larger on-disk space.

There is a change proposal for next spring's Fedora 32 release to switch to static linking with Python 3 and its library. A 5~27% improvement has been reported as the possible benefit to Fedora though that may vary depending upon the actual Python workload.

With statically linking Python 3, the profile guided optimizations (PGO) or link-time optimizations (LTO) already employed by the Fedora packaging should see further performance benefits.

Those opposing this change proposal on the mailing list seem to be primarily against the proposal on the basis of the static linking causing ~3MB greater size for the package.

We'll see how this proposal goes as the Fedora 32 work gets further along and the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee weigh this possible change for faster Python performance.