libraries

[Peter Rowell]

The following may have been suggested or inferred during this discussion,
but I haven't seen it yet, so here goes.....:

What if a "library" was simply an editable file that contained the
names (possibly including *'s and such) of interesting .o files.
Additionally, there could be an optional SYMDEF file that had the
already-munched global symbol info in it.

The benefits include:

    1.	Files in a library can live anywhere they want, not just
	in a single directory.

    2.	There is no rebuild time. Changing one of the named .o
	files implicitly updates the library as seen by the loader.

    3.	Order can be specified if it is important.

    4.	The storage space involved is trivial.

    5.	The optional SYMDEF file would supply a performance boost
	for frequently accessed libraries (e.g. libc.a).

    6.	If the library-definition-file or any of the "touched" .o's
	(i.e. you were actually going to use it) was younger than a
	pre-existing SYMDEF file, a rebuild of the SYMDEF file is
	done automatically. (creeping featurism!)

This seems to handle what I was getting from Chris Torek's original
posting (quick, cheap libraries), and seems to handle the objections
of some of the other people.  It should be absolutely trivial to add
the first part (the library file itself), and pretty straightforward
to do the SYMDEF stuff.

Comments?

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Rowell				"He made a symbolic gesture."
Third Eye Software, Inc.		+1 415 321 0967
Menlo Park, CA  94025 USA		peter at thirdi.UUCP