Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/05/27/03:18:33
On 26 May 1997, Paul Derbyshire wrote:
> And if these djgpp-dlls were always stored in a specific location, say
> c:\, or c:\djdll, or some recognized location, then nobody would get their
> disks filling up with duplicated code.
IMHO, this won't help. Since MS-DOS doesn't have standardized
directory trees, you cannot rely on people having such a directory.
Even %DJDIR% is different on each machine. A good example of these
problems is CWSDPMI: it is no coincidence that DJGPP programs look
for it in the same directory where the .exe resides, in addition to
the PATH. Try distributing a binary without CWSDPMI and telling
people they should have it in a standard directory and see what
happens.
There is a trade-off here between polluting the disk and reliable
operation (what would be your first reaction when a just-unzipped
program won't run saying something like "couldn't file djgpp.dll:
ENOENT"?), and most people prefer the latter, especially since disk
storage is so cheap these days.
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