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From: gl8f@astsun9.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: Caveats for writing DAs?
Message-ID: <1990Oct5.175429.3070@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 5 Oct 90 17:54:29 GMT
References: <39204@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Sender: news@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU
Organization: Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia
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In article <39204@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> chu@acsu.buffalo.edu (john c chu) writes:
>I remember a while back there was a thread about things to be aware of
>when writing Desk Accessories. Stuff about mallocing, file pointers,
>what happens to the DA when a program terminates etc. Of course, I
>wasn't paying too much attention to it at the time and now I need the
>information.

I think the easiest summary is "don't keep any operating system
resources tied up when you call evnt_multi". That means no mallocing
and no open files.

Then the only exception is that you can malloc memory right when you
start up, before you call evnt_multi for the first time. [In that case
the memory becomes owned by the desktop, which never exits, so the
memory never gets deallocated.]

Of course, if you're running RTX or Mint, you can do more. Then you
can arrange for another process to allocate memory or leave files
open.


--
"Restraint, hell. I'm just too fucking busy." -- Bill Wisner