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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!darwin.sura.net!ra!tantalus.nrl.navy.mil!eric From: eric@tantalus.nrl.navy.mil (Eric Youngdale) Subject: Re: SHARED LIBRARIES - THE END Message-ID: <C7Jy17.FCt@ra.nrl.navy.mil> Sender: usenet@ra.nrl.navy.mil Organization: Naval Research Laboratory References: <PC123.93May22195506@bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk> <HAGAN.93May24115502@freya.cs.umass.edu> <1993May24.174302.4975@gmd.de> Date: Mon, 24 May 1993 22:19:54 GMT Lines: 50 In article <1993May24.174302.4975@gmd.de> veit@mururoa.gmd.de (Holger Veit) writes: >As you appear to know Linux, you should also know that in particular >the shared libraries are one of the worst rats nests available, since >they emerged over several incompatible stages. So, if you get some About 8 months ago, I would have sadly had to agree with you. Things have changed a lot since then, however, and these "arguments" against the linux shared libraries are very stale indeed. The problem of "incompatible stages" was solved early last September with libc - we have not had an incompatible release of libc since then, and there have been a number of changes in the interim period. The problem of "incompatible stages" was solved in a more general fashion last February with the release of version 3.0 of the X libraries, and this occurred at the same time as the addition of a form of dynamic linking and the release of a set of tools for building sharable libraries that generally makes the task fairly painless. I might add that the versions of libc that can be dynamicly linked to are compatible with the binaries linked to the libc that was released last September. There are a number of other sharable libraries such as XView (free) and Motif (for which you must pay). There is also a drop in replacement for libXaw which was compiled from the Xaw3d code - the same user binaries will run with either shared library, but you just set a symlink to select which one should be used (in the most recent version, non-suid programs can load their libraries using an environment variable to help locate the libraries). >Insiders like me and many others who play with 386bsd since the earliest >days know what is going on in the system and know which executable >needs which shared library, and know about troubleshooting in case, but >incompatible software is a problem for the large number of not so >experienced people. This is only the most obvious problem with >shared libraries; a different one is the ease of creation, compatibility >to and consistency with the rest of the system are some others. I agree with all of this. Idiot-proofing all around is the name of the game. -Eric P.S. I might add that because of the flames that the linux libraries have received (and still receive) from the c.o.3.* newsgroups (or c.o.3 activists), my first reaction to this thread was to simply keep my mouth shut and not offer you people the benefit of any of our experiences. Watching your latest attempt burn to death seems to have softened my heart somewhat, and hence this post. -- "When Grigor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." -F. Kafka