🚀 go-pugleaf

On 20 Aug 1995 00:23:31 GMT, Maynard Handley (maynardh@apple.com) wrote:
: In article <415q72$7j6@blackice.winternet.com> Jeff Dege,
: jdege@winternet.com writes:
: >
: >   And if the QT libraries had been statically linked, you'd have had
: >to relink the apps to gain the advantages, or if a provider did't provide
: >a mechanism for relinking its app, you'd have the provider ship you
: >a new executable.
: >
: 
: And for those of us who live in the real world, how exactly do you 
: propose this happens? When I install one copy of QT 2.0 on my system, all 
: my QT-aware apps beenfit. How do they all beneify on your system?

    All of the issues you raise have to do with software distribution.
None of it is relevent to the more fundamental question of what is an
OS capable or not capable of.

: You seem unaware of the vast gap between "theory" and reality. 
: For heavens sake, in theory we can do all the computation we want on a 
: Turing machine. By your logic, anyone working to produce anything more 
: sophisticated is wasting their time.

    I have never claimed that dynamic linking was a waste of time, only
that its presence or absence in an OS didn't sigificantly impact what
tasks could be performed with that OS.

    If the functions provided by the Quicktime libraries can be accomplished
by routines in a dynamically linked library, those same functions could be
accomplished by the same routines in a statically linked library.  So 
dynamic linking doesn't really impact what can be done by an OS.  You
can't say the same for more fundamental issues.  If an OS lacks the
concept of separate users, or lacks a RPC mechanism, or lacks preemptive
multitasking, or memory protection, or any of a myriad different things,
it _significantly_ changes what tasks a computer running that OS can
be used for.

    You've added a third item to my list.

    Dynamically-linked libraries allow you to:

1.  Save on disk space.
2.  Save on RAM.
3.  Ease software upgrades.

    Tell me how any of these make it possible or not possible to run a
particular class of software on a machine.

-- 
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