🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct7.195130.17312@unixg.ubc.ca> ochealth@unixg.ubc.ca (ochealth) writes:

>We weren't talking about the philosophy of DLLs. The point is that for
>*the C library* it would be *very nice* if IBM provided a standard C library
>DLL as part of the OS/2 system.   (...)

I'm still not sure it's a feasible step.  There is normally a lot of
extra stuff in any particular "C library" that may or may not
translate among compilers.  You aren't always aware of it when writing
programs, but it's one of the reasons you can't just link an Microsoft
C object file with a Borland C library, for example.  And if we can't
get normal library files that are interchangeable, what are the odds
of doing it as a DLL?

Then there's the calling convention issue - some of the newer
compilers (or even older ones such as Watcom) do a lot of optimization
of the calling convention of functions unless you explicitly ask for a
standard C calling convention.  Since this can significantly improve
performance, would you be willing to give that up to have a common C
library DLL?  (I'm presuming that different vendors will want to, or
already do, optimize calls differently)

>It would be a small, but good step: smaller EXEs, less memory, greater 
>standardization. Besides, many OSes supply a C library.

Well, that's true - but how many OSes supply a C library that works
with anything other than the compiler that the vendor of the OS sells?
Sure, Sun and IBM for example have shared C libraries that they supply
with the system, but GNU C for example comes with its own library anyway.

--
-- David
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