Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!rpi!think.com!paperboy!meissner From: meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner) Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals Subject: Re: Fundamental defect of the concept of shared libraries Message-ID: Date: 28 May 91 18:49:10 GMT References: <1991May20.163317.19968@decuac.dec.com> <1991May20.175555.13943@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <224@titccy.cc.titech.ac.jp> <8029@auspex.auspex.com> Sender: news@OSF.ORG Organization: Open Software Foundation Lines: 23 In-reply-to: guy@auspex.auspex.com's message of 25 May 91 17:38:35 GMT In article <8029@auspex.auspex.com> guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes: | >As I already said, PIC (Position Independent Code) imposes several | >restrictions to hardware, which many architectures can't obey. | | Which architectures? SPARC obviously isn't one of them, and HP-PA | isn't, either, as the HP folks also did their shared libraries on Series | 800 machines. So far, MIPS R-series doesn't seem to be one, either; its | branch instructions are position-independent, and it can do an | unconditional "branch to subroutine", so it can get the PC of the | beginning of the routine into a register with position-independent code. | The Motorola 88K isn't one, either; check out the System V Release 4 ABI | for the 88K. The MIPS branch instructions are PC-relative, but are limited to +/- 128K range. This obviously might cause problems with some fortran applications..... -- Michael Meissner email: meissner@osf.org phone: 617-621-8861 Open Software Foundation, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA, 02142 You are in a twisty little passage of standards, all conflicting.