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From: gandalf@csli.Stanford.EDU (Juergen Wagner)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Does GNU emacs ever use shared libraries?
Message-ID: <8956@csli.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 12 May 89 21:33:09 GMT
References: <152@talarian.UUCP>
Sender: gandalf@csli.Stanford.EDU (Juergen Wagner)
Reply-To: gandalf@csli.stanford.edu (Juergen Wagner)
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Organization: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford U.
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In article <152@talarian.UUCP> scott@talarian.UUCP (Scott Weitzenkamp) writes:
>  I noticed that on SunOS 4.0, GNU emacs uses the -Bstatic flag to cc
>to prevent the use of shared libraries.  Does GNU emacs ever use 
>shared libraries?  If not, why not?  Does System V have an option
>like -Bstatic to prevent the use of shared libraries?

The main reason is the way in which GNUemacs binaries are created: you start
an "empty" Emacs which loads all necessary files, and then a core image of
Emacs with preloaded files is created. This core image is converted to an
executable program, and that's what you fire up as GNUEmacs.

The problem with this process is that if you save the core image, all routines
have to be resolved, i.e. the resulting image will not support dynamic linking.

[I haven't built Emacs in a while, so things might have changed.]

-- 
Juergen Wagner		   			gandalf@csli.stanford.edu
						 wagner@arisia.xerox.com