Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 10:17:58 +0300 (IDT)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Paul Derbyshire <ao950 AT FreeNet DOT Carleton DOT CA>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Shared libraries
In-Reply-To: <5mc4r7$am4@freenet-news.carleton.ca>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.970527101740.10847K-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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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.