Re: Dynamically linked libraries?

On Wed, May 21, 2003 at 03:45:07PM -0400, David A de Gruyl wrote:
> I am wondering if support is planned (in any sense) for dynamic 
> libraries on the vax platform?
> 
> I realize that this might entail a change of binary type, but I am 
> unsure why it is not currently used.  It may be a large effort in 
> porting from NetBSD, I suppose.

I do not intend to do PIC a.out on OpenBSD/vax, since with all the
rest of the world moved or moving to ELF, being the last bastion
of that code is not a happy prospect. Unfortunately ELF itself is
significantly slower than a.out on exec, and you have to add the
roughly 10% performance hit dynamic linking adds on top of that,
plus more time spent building shared objects during make build.

The advantage is greater flexibility and support for a wider
variety of software.

So far I've focused on supporting the hardware I own as well as
possible, and userland is probably somewhat neglected. That will
change - I have a somewhat hybrid machine that's used for testing
the options available - but no date has been set for migration.

/Hugh

PS, to anyone who wants to see this happen, a 4000 705A CPU board
might pique my interest!

> 
> David
> 
> -- 
> David de Gruyl <[email protected]>
> Princeton(ish), NJ