object archives (Re: IEEE 1003.2)

[Scott Schwartz]

In article <14946 at mimsy.UUCP>, chris at mimsy (Chris Torek) writes:

>For that matter, why do we need object archives in the first place?
>They are just a hack to save space (and perhaps, but not necessarily,
>time).  How about /lib/libc/*.o?

Absolutely.  Lots of other systems (VM/CMS, for example) have this;
people like it, why not try it out under unix.  4.4BSD, anyone?

About saving space:  isn't it the case that object archives do save
space?  Less internal fragmentation, and all that?   Maybe that is
only true under the old filesystem.

>(About 1/2 :-) ---the file system is *supposed* to be clean enough and
>fast enough to support this sort of thing; why *are* we working against
>it?)

Hmmm,  you might have to stat lots of files looking for the right
entry point.  I guess we would need a directory oriented version of
something like ranlib, in that case.
-- 
Scott Schwartz		<schwartz at shire.cs.psu.edu>