Date: Mon, 14 Nov 1994 09:45:07 -0500 (CDT)
From: Aaron Ucko <UCKO AT VAX1 DOT ROCKHURST DOT EDU>
Subject: Re: Shared libraries
To: dj AT stealth DOT ctron DOT com
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Organization: Rockhurst College; Kansas City, MO

>> My understanding of the situation is that the only thing keeping DJGPP 
>> from normally using shared libraries is global variables accessed by 
>> both the libraries and your program.  Couldn't this be remedied by 
>> adding some sort of hook to the startup code to automatically export any 
>> desired global variables?  Or is the only legal startup code to be found 
>> in (g)crt0.o?  Just wondering...
>
>The biggest problem is that once the program is built and stripped,
>you don't know *where* the variables are - strip removes that
>information.

Ouch.  Hmmm.  How about some sort of (don't tell the FSF :-) ) #pragma?  How
do other systems handle this sort of thing?
>
>The other big problem is that shared libraries are normally loaded by
>the OS, and ms-dos is still the OS in this case.  To use shared
>libraries, each program would have to have the loader linked into it,
>which is almost as much space as the library itself.
>
Why not build something like that into DJGPP 2.0?  Have the stub launch a
loader which exits after loading the libraries?

--- Aaron Ucko (ucko AT vax1 DOT rockhurst DOT edu; finger for PGP public key) -=- httyp!
-=*=-Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.-=*=-
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