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Mail Archives: djgpp/1999/06/13/04:16:33

Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 11:13:33 +0300 (IDT)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
X-Sender: eliz AT is
To: Christopher Nelson <paradox AT gye DOT satnet DOT net>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Hello World and File size
In-Reply-To: <01beb395$66e78320$LocalHost@thendren>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.990613111308.17906K@is>
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Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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On Thu, 10 Jun 1999, Christopher Nelson wrote:

> Take Quake as an example.  It typically uses at LEAST 3mb for the surface
> cache, another couple of megs for the light cache, plus as much memory as
> you have for textures, and finally, of course, world files and models.  If
> Quake were more than just a shoot-em-up, (say it had some strategic elements
> to it that allowed you to "own" a part of the world, build stuff, etc. --
> say you can also then go shoot-up the bad guys like a typical Quake game)
> then it would probably require an entirely different interface for that
> part.

This is an entirely different issue.  This thread touched the DLL
subject in the context of the standard libraries, not in the context
of specific code applications load for their special needs.

If you need to make program-specific code dynamically loaded, you can
use one of the available packages that are compatible with DJGPP (see
section 22.3 of the FAQ for some pointers).

> Okay, Now imagine that you've got tons and tons of DJGPP programs, each one
> with it's own copy of the same stuff linked into it.  Imagine how many megs
> would be free if they didn't?

I'm arguing that the disk space saved by this is much less important
than the mess we will have on our hands due to proliferation of subtly
incompatible versions of the standard libraries.

> My point is, that if all my progams could
> share one copy of Allegro, I'd be saving at least 10-15 MB of space.  And
> for me that's alot.

Even if 10MB is ``a lot'', IMHO it's worth paying for the reliability
of the programs.

> what about plugins?  that's one area that really shines with DLL's.  If you
> want to write a plug-in with a static program, you've got to recompile it
> every time you add one in.

Again, please remember that we were talking about standard libraries
only.  There are existing solutions for dynamically loading
program-specific code and data.

> >So you suggest, in effect, that the DJGPP stub loader will have to know
> >about DLLs and perform the duties that DOS cannot do, right?  How much
> >will that bloat the stub?
> 
> No, silly.

Thanks a lot!  Whatever I said to trigger this response, I apologize,
but I don't think I have any reasons to continue this discussion after
such an offense.

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