object archives (Re: IEEE 1003.2)

[Scott Schwartz]

In article <8542 at alice.UUCP>, andrew at alice (Andrew Hume) writes:
>i agitate dfor this in plan9 and ken's response was basically that
>it would always be too inefficient to do 10 or 20 or 100 or 200
>opens to look at object files. with archives, one open is it.

For something like the C library, which gets used constantly, this is
sensible, but for libraries that are under development it might be
nice to be able to exploit the filesystem.  The point is giving users
the option shouldn't be too expensive in general.  An instance of
prior art is X11R3's treatment of fonts: designated directories are
filled with font files, and an index file.
-- 
Scott Schwartz		<schwartz at shire.cs.psu.edu>