Shared libraries (was Re: Window system bashing (was Re: X11 bashing))

[Frank Mayhar]

In article <109 at titccy.cc.titech.ac.jp>, mohta at necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp (Masataka Ohta) writes:
-> In article <1991Apr15.224311.3950 at ida.liu.se>
-> 	d89peter at odalix.ida.liu.se (Peter Eriksson) writes:
-> >(some discussion about windows vs text terminals deleted)
-> That's fine. I only want to show an alternative. I don't want to impose it
-> to everyone else.

Most of the people here use text-only terminals.  That doesn't mean that
they wouldn't be more productive using windowing workstations, it just means
that they are productive enough using the technology they're familiar with.

Note, though, that several people use more than one terminal at a time.
How is this different than having several xterms running?

-> If you have a rationally small environment, there will be much fewer bugs
-> than X-aged-several-years.

What is a "rationally small environment?"  Many times you have to deal with
very large environments.  I also don't understand how this relates to the
utility of shared libraries.  Shared libraries have been around on mainframes
for years; they are quite useful, in that they reduce memory and disk space
needs, and they enhance efficiency.

-> >No need to recompile
-> >all zillions small and big programs.
-> If you have a rationally small environment, you don't have zillions of small
-> and big programs.

But _any_ system used by more than a handful of people _is_ going to have
"zillions" of small and big programs.  Or at least dozens.  And that's where
shared libraries really shine, imho.  (One of the characteristics of Unix
is that it _does_ have "zillions" of little programs that all do a very
specific thing.  But they all (or most of them) use, say, the standard library,
right?  If that's a shared library, it means that those routines are only
found on one place on disk and in memory, and that they are most likely
already paged in when they are needed.)

-> I suspect shared libraries may introduce new types of security holes.

Of course they do.  But these holes can be plugged, with a little effort.
And in most cases, the added utility of shared libraries more than makes
up for that effort.
-- 
Frank Mayhar  fmayhar at hermes.ladc.bull.com (..!{uunet,hacgate}!ladcgw!fmayhar)
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