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From: gab10@griffincd.amdahl.com (Gary A Browning)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: [386BSD] basic shared lib questions
Message-ID: <86Cq02lx2epm01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com>
Date: 11 Dec 92 06:31:32 GMT
References: <1g85coINNfoc@pollux.usc.edu>
Sender: netnews@ccc.amdahl.com
Organization: Amdahl Corporation
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In article <1g85coINNfoc@pollux.usc.edu>, mharm@pollux.usc.edu (Michael
Harm) writes:
>
> Hi folks. Basic questions about shared libraries in 386bsd.
> I'm looking to get a 486 system to run 386bsd on, and need
> to judge how much disk space I need. Since I plan to run X
> on the thing, shared libraries impact heavily on my disk space
> considerations.
>
> Apparently someone has implemented shared libs for 386bsd.
> The questions are:
> 1) how easy/hard is it to get/install?
Pretty easy to get; it was in a single posting to this group
(elegantly small don't you think).
They are easy to install and you do not need to recompile the
library sources. To get the program binaries to use them, however,
requires recompilation. You are not going to get away with
the minimal disk space requirements if you have to recompile
X11R5.
> 2) has anyone produced Xfree86 binaries compiled for
> shared libs (or will this be made available soon?
> Failing this, how easy/hard is it to compile the sources
> oneself, using shared libs?
No current archives of X using shared libs.
Except for the altering the link commands in the makefiles, compiling
with the shared libraries should not be any harder than compiling without
them (there are ways that avoid changing the makefiles, also).
> 3) How much disk space are we looking at for bsd, all extensions,
> and X using shared libs?
I going to regret this but here goes. This is a really *rough* guess:
The most disk space will be required just before the X recompilation
finishes:
40MB for basic installation, 10MB swap space, 40MB for X with shared
libraries, 80MB? for X sources and *.o files during compilation.
This amount of disk space will still probably require playing swap
games between your disk and tape drive. It is likely that it will
require more disk space during the recompilation of X to use shared libs
than is occupied by the entire non-shared lib installation. If you
can get some temporary extra disk space, this may not be a problem.
> Any help greatly appreciated.
The Joerg post for shared libraries is relatively new and was not well
received. If you are going to use it, you should view it as a temporary
solution to shared libraries. There is a group involved in architecting
a more robust shared library implementation and hopefully, it will be
available with the 0.2 release.
The Joerg shared library system only builds shared libraries for libc.a
and libX11.a but it is not too hard to add other libraries. Unfortunatly,
global variables are not handled well, and some (and it is not clear which)
will need to be statically linked. People have built shared libraries
for X11R5 but I do not know how successful they have been.
Since there was a lot of (IMO unneccessary) controversy when this
implemetation was introduced, I fear that many of its user's have
become very quiet on the net. Unfortunately, this most certainly
will impact you and many others.
--
Gary Browning | Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a
| great idea hits you, and just before you realize
| what is wrong with it.