any reason for a linked statically gdalinfo?

[gdal_dev_reader]

Buchan,

> I have put a gdal package into Mandrake, using the default make rule, 
> halving it's size is appealing ...

here are the sizes i have :) (with hand-make dynamic link on debian):
-rw-r--r-- 1 amici amici 1308560 Aug 20 15:39 gdal-bin_1.1.7-1.1_i386.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 amici amici 1605506 Aug 20 15:39 libgdal0-dev_1.1.7-1.1_i386.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 amici amici 1077956 Aug 20 15:39 libgdal0_1.1.7-1.1_i386.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 amici amici 47504 Aug 20 15:39 python-gdal_1.1.7-1.1_i386.deb
the four packages contain anything produced by make install plus
some redundancy in administrative files.

the ogr library is staic only.

> 
> Btw, any time frame for SONAME support?
> 

Frank,

you allowed people to ping you on that starting on mid july... :)

if you agree i can submit a patch for GNUmakefile and
GDALmake.opts.in that enable SONAME support for GNU binutils.
what i'm not able to do is to twist the configure script to
identify a GNU target, final touch needs to be yours ;)

cheers,
alessandro