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From: hedrick@topaz.rutgers.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.unix.wizards,comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: Big Programs Hurt Performance
Message-ID: <14888@topaz.rutgers.edu>
Date: Sat, 19-Sep-87 21:21:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.14888
Posted: Sat Sep 19 21:21:16 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Sep-87 16:29:01 EDT
References: <1665@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM) <8579@utzoo.UUCP) <6886@eddie.MIT.EDU) <417@devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> <2498@xanth.UUCP>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 15
Keywords: cost of bloated programs
Xref: utgpu comp.arch:2123 comp.unix.wizards:4039 comp.os.misc:184

You don't really want the window system in ROM.  Window systems are
probably the least understood part of the system software.  What you
really want is shared libraries.  That way, only one copy of the code
is shared by all programs that use it, but you can change it.  Apollo
has had this for years.  Sun, like a number of other Unix vendors, is
implementing it now.  It will be part of SunOS 4.0.  In the meantime,
what Sun does is to link all of its tools together.  The commonly used
packages that run under Suntools are simply links to the same core
image.  It chooses which code to run based on the name by which it is
invoked.  Since all of these utilities are put together in one core
image, they share one copy of the libraries.  Since the thing is
demand paged, only the pieces that are actually used get paged in.
What a hack...  Shelltool is one of those, so that 737280 that you see
in fact includes 8 different programs.  (It looks like your system is
somehow missing the link.)