Pyramid Support of Shared Libraries

[Victor Scott Gregg]

In article <79957 at pyramid.pyramid.com> 
csg at pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst) writes:

>In article <17347 at bellcore.bellcore.com> Victor Scott Gregg writes:
>>Question for the net:
>
>Save some net bandwidth, and ask your salescritter.
>

Save some net bandwidth, reply instead of follow-up.

>>Could some one send me a pointer to information on Pyramid support for
>>shared libraries?
>
>Pyramid does not support shared libraries in either OSx 5.0 (current) 
>or 5.1 >(planned). 

I suspect that most customers haven't moved to 5.0 yet, but thanks for 
the info that shared libraries are not supported in 5.0 or 5.1.

>It is a win on smaller systems, like workstations and 3B2's, but not as 
>important on a large system as a lot of other things we could be working on. 

I think that there are benefits to supporting shared libraries which are 
independent of machine size.  (IBM MVS/C supports shared libraries on 3090.)

>Implementing shared libraries would mean changing binary file
>formats, something that was a more-pain-that-gain proposition. 

Implementing shared-libraries would add a new binary format, but there 
is no reason that existing binaries could not be supported.

>Note that binaries from OSx 2.1 will still run under OSx 5.0, 
>five years later, even on the MIServer. 

I agree that this is a good thing, but shared libraries could be implemented
and new binaries required only if the customer wanted to take advantage 
of the feature.  

>Not forcing the customers to recompile everything at every major release 
>is something that has been pretty important to the company. 

Once shared libraries are available, it would be possible to make fixes 
to standard libraries without touching the application binaries. This is one 
of two main benefits of shared libraries.

The other is to reduce the memory and paging requirements for application 
transactions which use common code.  This seems like a WIN in the MISserver.

>
><csg>


Victor S. Gregg       gregg at ctt.bellcore.com     _   _        _  _   _   _
444 Hoes Ln (1C-206)  uunet!bellcore!ctt!gregg  |_| |_ |  |  |  | | |_| |_
Piscatway, NJ 08854   (201) 699-4596            |_| |_ |_ |_ |_ |_| | \ |_
Standard Disclaimer: M Y opinions only, N O T those of my employer.