Xref: utzoo comp.unix.wizards:11096 comp.os.misc:514
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!decvax!tektronix!orca!tekecs!frip!andrew
From: andrew@frip.gwd.tek.com (Andrew Klossner)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.os.misc
Subject: shared libraries and dynamic relocation
Message-ID: <10358@tekecs.TEK.COM>
Date: 13 Sep 88 04:02:00 GMT
References: <21606@ccicpg.UUCP> <7622@boring.cwi.nl> <2040@cuuxb.ATT.COM> <7716@bigtex.uucp> <67440@sun.uucp> <7804@bigtex.uucp>
Sender: andrew@tekecs.TEK.COM
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville, Oregon
Lines: 20

[]

		"It also means it's easier to make it more powerful;
		the SunOS shared libraries are not tied to specific
		locations, and relocation is done when the library is
		mapped in."

	"What are the performance trade-offs here?  All of Sun's
	hardware may support position independent code, but I wonder
	what the expense would be of actually relocating the library
	code on each and every exec() on a processor where all branches
	are absolutely addressed."

Note that AT&T has announced that, with system V release 4, they will
also do dynamic loading on exec to support shared system calls.  They
will also trash the COFF format in favor of yet another object file
format, ELF.

  -=- Andrew Klossner   (decvax!tektronix!tekecs!andrew)       [UUCP]
                        (andrew%tekecs.tek.com@relay.cs.net)   [ARPA]