From: blroberts@xactware.com (Barry Roberts) Subject: Why is cygwin.dll? -Reply 16 Jan 1997 11:21:43 -0800 Approved: cygnus.gnu-win32@cygnus.com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 4.1 Original-To: gnu-win32@cygnus.com, M.Carter@gcal.ac.uk Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32@cygnus.com Even though all of the other responses are very accurate and correct, I can't resist throwing in MY favorite reasons for using DLL's for commonly used code. Under Windows, there is never more than one copy of the code in cygwin.dll in memory. No matter how many copies of bash, grep, man, etc. you have running, there is only one copy of the code. So even though each .exe wouldn't grow by 3 MB if they were statically linked, they could EASILY take more memory at run-time. Plus, running cygnus utilities from inside bash is faster because the dll is already loaded, it just has to be mapped into the address space of the new process. Barry Roberts >>> M.Carter 01/15/97 05:20am >>> Can anyone explain the general purpose of cygwin.dll? Surely it would be better to incorporate any of the facilities it provides in with the executable. This would lead to a much simpler system. Installation and execution of binaries would be easier. Or is it not that simple? I know, for instance, that DJGPP requires a DPMI. On the other hand, there are many executables that you can get over the Internet which install directly, and work straight away. - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request@cygnus.com" with one line of text: "help". - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request@cygnus.com" with one line of text: "help".