Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!uwvax!oddjob!hao!gatech!mcnc!uvaarpa!umd5!eneevax!noise
From: noise@eneevax.UUCP (Johnson Noise)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Question Re: Configuration Management
Summary: Have a clue!
Message-ID: <1252@eneevax.UUCP>
Date: 22 Feb 88 02:26:00 GMT
References: <497@aimt.UUCP> <5257@well.UUCP> <2984@metavax.UUCP>
Reply-To: noise@eneevax.umd.edu.UUCP (Johnson Noise)
Organization: Elec. Eng. Dept., U of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
Lines: 30

In article <2984@metavax.UUCP> chris@metavax.UUCP (Chris Collins) writes:
>In article <5257@well.UUCP> pokey@well.UUCP (Jef Poskanzer) writes:
> 
>>One problem peculiar to Unix is caused by the brain-damaged library
>>system.  Let's say you have a .c file with 20 marginally related
>>routines in it.  You make it into a library, then write a program
>>that uses only one of those routines.  When you link it, guess what
>>happens?  All 20 routines get pulled into your executable.
> 
>I hate to say this, but why isn't such a linker the standard on Unix?

	NO! NO! NO!

>
>It seems to me that if Unix is _the_ system for programmers, as it has
>been described to me several times, why does this idiocy exist?  What
>good is a linker that is so stupid, other than it's all there is?  One
>supposed Unix guru tried to tell me that this actually made the linker
>smarter!!!!!!   (I replied by asking how he removed his lobotomy scar.)
>

	Get a clue!  The linker will pull in whole object modules which
have been put in a library.  If one seperates functions into several
object modules and then creates a library,  the desired effect of the
so called "optimizing linker" is acheived.  All the systems I have seen
work this way.  Don't criticize something you don't understand!

	BTW Unix is THE system, for programmers or otherwise, it does
have one obvious drawback: it assumes the user is competent.  The idiocy
you speak of is not with system!  A lobotomy in your case is not necessary.