On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Jason R Thorpe wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 01:45:27AM +0200, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> 
>  > Which is actually how dynamic linked libraries are implemented in
>  > Unix. It's actually a hack to add something that the basic design didn't
>  > addess. (Now I'm really picking on Unix as a whole. :-)
> 
> Err.. how did unix's basic design not allow for shared libraries other
> than via a "hack"?

I knew this one would give me hell. :-)

My point is basically that Unix as such don't know anything about shared
libraries. Instead you have a piece of code linked into your binary, which
at runtime runs like any nice, normal piece of user code in Unix runs, and
it loads data into memory, modifies parts of the executing code, and
voila, you have dynamically loaded libraries.
Did the kernel know about this? No. And so, Unix don't have dynamically
loaded libraries, but a way around that limitation have been found, as in
so many other instances with Unix.
Please don't get me rambling down this path, or you'll all take me for a
lunetic before long. :-)

	Johnny

Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@update.uu.se           ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol