Unfortunate dynamic linking for everything
dyson at iquest.net
dyson at iquest.net
Wed Nov 19 21:47:49 PST 2003
Tim Kientzle said:
> Richard Coleman wrote:
> > It seems /bin/sh is the real sticking point.
>
> There is a problem here: Unix systems have historically used
> /bin/sh for two somewhat contradictory purposes:
> * the system script interpreter
> * as a user shell
>
> The user shell must be dynamically linked in order
> to support centralized administration. I personally
> see no way around that. Given that many users do
> rely on /bin/sh, it seems that /bin/sh must be
> dynamically linked.
>
It isn't necessary for the shell to be dynamically linked
(efficiency issue WRT the sparse allocations and greater
COW overheads/etc) for the shell to programmatically link in
a module for optional feature sets. This can even be
placed under a libc call (which then wouldn't encumber
the shell unless the feature was active and increase the
footprint of generally all libc routines.)
John
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