smail 3.1 and shared libraries

[Karl Swartz]

I just built and installed smail 3.1.18 on ditka.  Installed very
easily and works like a champ -- I'm impressed!!!  (Many thanks to
the authors for doing such a nice job.)

My only real complaints are that it is big and slow, and on a 3b1
this is of some concern.  One obvious thought was to link it using
shared libraries.  I hacked src/Makefile to do the ld command but
get complains about vfprintf not being defined -- the shared lib
doesn't have it listed.  I know there've been various ways of using
shared libraries but the simple 'ld -i /lib/crt0s.o /lib/shlib.ifile'
sequence has been adequate for me until now.

Obviously shared libraries will make the executables smaller, but
what about load time?  On SunOS 4.x shared libraries actually make
for slightly (hardly measurable) *slower* load times.  I suspect,
if anything, they'd speed things up on the 3b1 by virtue of less
stuff to read from disk and lower memory use.  Any thoughts?

(Another possibility is recompiling smail 3.1 with gcc.  Has this
been done on a UNIX PC, and what kind of speed improvement might I
expect?)

-- 
Karl Swartz		|INet	kls at ditka.chicago.com
1-408/223-1308		|UUCP	{uunet,decwrl}!daver!ditka!kls
			|Snail	1738 Deer Creek Ct., San Jose CA 95148
"It's psychosomatic.  You need a lobotomy.  I'll get a saw." (Calvin)