Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 21:22:49 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <199709120122.VAA02054@delorie.com>
From: DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>
To: dz AT bo DOT dada DOT it
CC: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
In-reply-to: <3417DC6B.62CF@bo.dada.it> (message from Diego Zuccato on Thu, 11
	Sep 1997 13:56:27 +0200)
Subject: Re: fread slowstart
Precedence: bulk


> 64K should be enough. (Uh, deja-vu :-) ) And it shouldn't too hard to
> modify startup code to save it to flat memory on startup and restore it
> when exiting main() or when a fatal error (Exception 13 or similars)
> occours.

There is no need to save it.  Whenever a program is started, the
parent's TB has nothing but the child's argv and env in it, and the
parent never uses them after the child returns.

> Uh, since different stub releases are often incompatible and utilities
> themselves could create troubles (eg using 2.00 bins mixed with 2.02

That's why I'm thinking of letting crt0.c do the work, instead of
stub.asm.  crt0 would have to detect *if* a previous TB is large
enough, shrink its own down to save space, and reconfigure itself to
use the detected TB.  If no TB is detected, it expands its own and
stores the pointer somewhere in DOS memory.

> bins), why not use 2 of those 32 bits for a 'release' magic number ?

There's already a version string in the first eight bytes of the stub.