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From: rbunten@micrognosis.co.uk (Rob Bunten)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: Shared Library Objectives (Was: Shared Lib Question (ISC))
Message-ID: <1991May16.121906.15128@micrognosis.co.uk>
Date: 16 May 91 12:19:06 GMT
References: <276@rwing.UUCP> <162@titccy.cc.titech.ac.jp> <1991May11.011213.4846@NCoast.ORG> <1991May13.144438.21103@sco.COM>
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In article <1991May13.144438.21103@sco.COM>, larryp@sco.COM (Larry
Philps) writes:
>Actaully, I think part of the reason there are so many implementations is
>that there are so many conflicting goals.  Just what do you want from your
>shared library system?
>
>Possibilites:  (Note, by ATT, I mean AT&T SVR3 shared libraries)
>
>    1) Ability to easily create a shared library:
>    2) Fast Startup times:
>    3) Fast execution:
>    4) Maximum Memory sharing between processes
>    5) Easy maintenance
>
>These are the result of some intellectual lunches I had with a friend.
>They took place a while ago so I might have forgotten a goal or two.

One you haven't mention is reduction of on-disk program size. One of the
rumours I've heard is that Sun introduced shared libraries to reduce the number
of tapes needed for OS upgrades.