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From: kent@xanth.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: shared libraries, a call for CATS to come to the rescue!
Message-ID: <1315@xanth.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 17-Jun-87 10:10:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: xanth.1315
Posted: Wed Jun 17 10:10:58 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 19-Jun-87 05:35:31 EDT
References: <8706110603.AA27095@cogsci.berkeley.edu> <1379@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> <2025@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>
Reply-To: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va.
Lines: 34
Summary: How about a brilliant unlinker?

In article <2025@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP> andy@cbmvax.UUCP (Andy Finkel) writes:
>Maybe its time for a *brilliant* linker...
>andy finkel		{ihnp4|seismo|allegra}!cbmvax!andy 

Maybe what we need is something to take libraries apart, so that we can
put the needed modules in an explicit order, and a half linker, that does
a link of everything it's given, and produces an object module ready for
more linking.  That way I could take apart window_lib to get its "push"
routine, link it to my window_rtn, giving window_rtn_half_linked, take apart
stack_lib to get its "push" routine, link it to my stack_rtn, giving
stack_rtn_half_linked, and then link main, window_rtn_half_linked, and
stack_rtn_half_linked with the standard libraries, giving the great new
program stack_windows_with_confusing_pushes.

Still doesn't get you were you want to go if you call both pushes from the
same routine, but at least you're closer.

See the article "Design and Implementation of a C-based Language for
Distributed Real-time Systems", A. Rizk, F Halsall, SIGPLAN NOTICES V22 N6,
June 1987, Page 83-100 for the ultimate solution to the problem, a language
MC that allows C modules like Ada(tm) modules, and, like Ada, allows a "dot"
notation like the one for structures to refer to routines within the module:
window_module.push() and stack_module.push(), for example, would solve the
above problem at the source code level, assuming the libraries would keep the
fully qualified names for functions, including the module names.

Kent.

--
Kent Paul Dolan, LCDR, NOAA, Retired; ODU MSCS grad student	 // Yet
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