Shared libraries

[Melinda Shore]

In article <172 at titccy.cc.titech.ac.jp> mohta at necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp (Masataka Ohta) writes:
>The change [array of host addresses] was introduced with 4.3BSD to meet
>the requirements of DNS.

Let's try thinking about it, shall we?  What functionality is provided
by static hostname lookup?  What kind of information is provided in
HOSTS.TXT by the NIC?  What functionality is provided by distributed
domain name service?  What kind of information does it handle?  Very
good.

Now, here's the hard part - keeping in mind that while correlation
often implies causality it doesn't prove it, can you explain *why* the
introduction of a distributed mechanism would cause a change in the
information being provided?  Is there a necessary relationship between
delivery mechanism and the content of the thing being delivered?
Comments in source code don't count - we're looking for understanding
and explanation, not rote repetition.  What was it about gateways that
changed with the introduction of a distributed name service?

And, as some one else pointed out, this particular change would not
break existing binaries.  While there surely are arguments against
shared libraries, this is not one of them.
-- 
                    Software longa, hardware brevis
Melinda Shore - Cornell Information Technologies - shore at theory.tn.cornell.edu