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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.hawaii.edu!ames!agate!tfs.com!tfs.com!julian From: julian@tfs.com (Julian Elischer) Subject: Shared libs & development in general. Message-ID: <1992Dec1.081943.6184@tfs.com> Organization: TRW Financial Systems Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1992 08:19:43 GMT Lines: 71 There has been a lot of noise just recently about the shared libraries posted. The fuss is slightly misplaced.. I am speaking now as part of a group of people embarking on the development of real shared libraries for 386bsd. The product we end up with May not even work with 0.1 but rather with 0.2 (or 0.1.5 8-)) we don't know yet. I was both delighted and worried by the appearance of the shared libraries posted here. Delighted because it shows the interest there is, and the tallent that is here, and worried because it is the 3rd set of shared libraries we have using this scheme.. How is it that people can co on developing on their own without knowing that there is a bunch of other people working on the same thing? I was also pleased becasue we are trying to bring together a group of people with enough experience to do this properly, and it looks as if we just found another. Bill Has specific ideas about what he wants in the shared libs and he has been working towards it in a sort of 'diagonal way' he has been adding things to the kernel that will make the shared libs he wants, more efficient. Obviously some of our 'members' have been playing with the shared libraries for longer than the group as a whole has been together, and we invite the author of the new code to join out mailing list. (send mail to julian@ref.tfs.com) (and anyone else who feels that they may be able to either contribute something or learn something). The three implimentations we have seen or heard of will all be useful to us. we will definitly need all the experience we can get and these act as 'models' we can use the get information about the behaviour of 386bsd programs with shared libs. Lynne has already mentionned, (and I will re-iterate) that ther is work behind the scenes to make a more formal arangement of workgroups and mailing lists. Hopefully ref.tfs.com will be able to play a part for a while and hopefully we will see real progress in the fields that 386bsd is deficient in. We are also looking at implimenting a 'porter's guide' that give the suggested layout of packages ported to 386bsd and other useful info. I hope that the author of the shared libs and Dr Veit will both be active in the workgroups, and that everybody involved in 386bsd will see the new shared libs code as an important step towards the real thing, which will come later. They are not the last word, but rather, the beginnings of a long trek. p.s. I hope that all the people who have written pc-cons drivers will realise that nothing is done correctly the first time.. they need to go back.. DISCUSS IT BETWEEN THEMSELVES, (why do I feel that I'm lecturing) and maybe even co-operate in writing one that jhas all the best features of all of them. (set up a list on ref.. ) julian. p.s. looks like ther may be a new set of patches for the SCSI stuff coming out soon with a Future Domain 16bit driver too (works but has a bug)