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From: terra AT diku DOT dk (Morten Welinder)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: Lots of small files in DJGPP waste space & should be chained up!
Date: 7 Oct 1995 13:56:30 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, U of Copenhagen
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Sender: terra AT tyr DOT diku DOT dk
References: <DG2uM1 DOT 5rz AT jade DOT mv DOT net>
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To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
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"A.Appleyard" <A DOT APPLEYARD AT fs2 DOT mt DOT umist DOT ac DOT uk> writes:

[about concatenating source files]

Disk space is cheap these days.  If you have a cluster size of 32K
you have a 1GB disk (or something like that) with just one partition.
Dos just doesn't handle that very well.

Having the sources for each function in a file for itself has its
advantages also: one function linked into your program doesn't drag
in all the others.  In this respect gcc/gnu ld follows just about
every other C system I know of: whenever a compilation unit is used
the whole unit is linked in.  There is as far as I know not enough
information in the .o and .obj formats to do better.

Why, by the way, do you find it necessary to have the source files
unzipped for all users?  Wouldn't it be better just to have the
zip files there and then unpack whatever you need to take a look
at something?  (Or use a tools like Emacs that doesn't care whether
it is unzipped or not.)

To summarize: the problem you point out is considered small, and it
seems to be a choice between evils.  I don't think it should be
changed.

Morten Welinder
terra AT diku DOT dk