Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!hybrid!scifi!bywater!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: Shareable Images/dynamic binding possible with Unix?
Keywords: vms
Message-ID: <6403@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 2 Mar 91 19:29:26 GMT
References: <598@bellahs.UUCP> <1991Mar1.171913.2975@cbnewsl.att.com>
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 17

>I won't comment on comparability to VMS, but UNIX System V Release 4
>has dynamically linked shared libraries.

*And* a procedural interface to the dynamic linker, which is what the
original poster appeared to be asking about (SunOS 4.0[.x] has
dynamically-linked shared libraries, but no procedural interface to the
linker - the interface first appeared in 4.1).

>A good place to find information about the facility, and how it ties
>into the Elf object format

Although one of the reasons run-time dynamic linking built into the OS
(NOTE: *NOT* necessarily built into the kernel - it's all done in user
mode, atop "mmap()", in SunOS 4.x and S5R4) is a win is that you can do
run-time dynamic linking without having to *know* about the object file
format; i.e., you don't have to write your own dynamic linking code that
groks object files.