Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-lcc!pyramid!thirdi!peter
From: peter@thirdi.UUCP (Peter Rowell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: libraries
Message-ID: <449@thirdi.UUCP>
Date: 30 Dec 88 16:43:13 GMT
References: <15080@mimsy.UUCP> <1278@nusdhub.UUCP> <15126@mimsy.UUCP> <445@thirdi.UUCP> <10485@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US>
Reply-To: peter@thirdi.UUCP (Peter Rowell)
Organization: Third Eye Software, Menlo Park, CA
Lines: 20

In article <10485@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (The Beach Bum) writes:
>In article <445@thirdi.UUCP> peter@thirdi.UUCP (Peter Rowell) writes:
>>What if a "library" was simply an editable file that contained the
>>names (possibly including *'s and such) of interesting .o files.
>>Additionally, there could be an optional SYMDEF file that had the
>>already-munched global symbol info in it.
>
>For systems with symlinks this reduces to a directory full of symbolic
>links.  The `file' containing the names is the directory itself.  Even
>without symbolic links, the only restriction is that the files remain
>in the same partition or disk.

Actually, it doesn't reduce to a directory because you have no
control over order of evaluation in a directory.  Also, the statement
"For systems with symlinks" hardly is inclusive of all OS's that
can reasonably claim to be UNIX.  Finally, my suggestion easily can be
made to work under *any* OS, not just those with symlinks,
cheap directories and tweaked namei cacheing.

The suggestion may have been simple, but it was not simplistic.