Subject: Re: xemacs on Alpha
To: None <port-alpha@netbsd.org>
From: Andrew Isaacson <adisaacs@mtu.edu>
List: port-alpha
Date: 10/01/1998 16:43:49
On Thu, Oct 01, 1998 at 12:44:16PM -0700, Tim Rightnour wrote:
> On 01-Oct-98 nm spoke unto us all:
> # So the problem lies in the 'dumping' process? what is the dumping process
> # anyway?
>
> <NOCLUE>
> I think it has something to do with bringing the size down of the executable..
> not sure exactly what it's doing in there though..
> </NOCLUE>
Instead of interpreting all of the initialization startup code every
time you load emacs, the build process makes a 'temacs' executable,
which loads and interprets the initialization code, and then "dumps" a
snapshot of its memory image out to disk. So the [x]emacs binary you
end up with has pre-executed elisp code in it.
Obviously dumping is a very system-dependent process.
-andy
--
Andy Isaacson adisaacs@mtu.edu adi@acm.org Fight Spam, join CAUCE:
http://www.csl.mtu.edu/~adisaacs/ http://www.cauce.org/