Shared libraries are not necessary

Masataka Ohta mohta at necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp
Wed May 22 17:07:25 AEST 1991


In article <1991May21.055103.25680 at Think.COM> barmar at think.com writes:

>>Most software upgrade is a little more complex than can be processed by
>>mere library change.

>How many standard C and Unix library functions have had changes to their
>interface?

Many.

>I'm sure there have been some changes over the years to the
>implementations of most of these library routines, but the interfaces have
>stayed nearly constant.

Yes, as they stayed nearly constant, recompilation was often enough.
                    ^^^^^^

For shared libraries be applicable, it must have stayed exactly constant.

>>You should not have said what you believe. 
>
>If I shouldn't say what I believe, what should I say?  Everything else is
>things that I don't believe, and saying them would be lying.

You should have said it with supporting facts.

>>>Note that an upgrade to use the DNS didn't *have* to include support for
>>>multiple addresses.

>What I meant was just as the /etc/hosts version ignores multiple addresses,
>the designers of the DNS version could have decided to return only one
>address, in order to leave the interface the same.

So what? What was discussed is how shared libraries is not useful for the
change from /etc/hosts to DNS in the real world.

							Masataka Ohta



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