[OT] Shared Libraries (was Re: Deployment woes (was: I will kill my Python))

[Moshe Zadka]

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001 22:44:37 GMT, grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards) wrote:

> The whole "DLL roulette" game that Windows
> users play every time they install something seems a bit
> ridiculous.  Under most Unix systems you can install as many
> different revisions of a shared library as you want.

Let me just note that the whole concepts and theory of Windows shared
libraries (AKA DLLs) and UNIX shared objects (.so's, also called shared
librarires) are so far, it's a shame they are called by the same name.
They both try to solve the same problem, but the underlying system
is so different, there's no basis for comparison *except* for end-user
experience. Here the situation differs between Unices as much as it
does between Windows and UNIX, and has nothing to do with the implementation:
even different distribution of Linux handle it with varying quality.

Basically, the problem is thorny, the solution is hairy, and the only
saving grace of Linux is that the packages have concepts of dependancies.

Other Unices seldom get much software installed on them: either commercial
software (which *isolates* itself from the environment as best it can,
so all shared libraries are internal), or GNU software, of which only
the parts which are easy to install (IOW, executables) are, with libraries
being few and far between. GNU programs usually contain all the code
they need (bash contains a miniature readline, etc.), precisely to be
installed easily.
-- 
Moshe Zadka <sig at zadka.site.co.il>
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