-=> On 28 Apr 95  13:25:48 Mike Bilow said to Andrew Grillet <=-

 MB> Andrew Grillet wrote in a message to Rob Landley:

 AG> Since the whole of OS/2 is written in C, presumably it is
 AG> linked with the C RTL.

 MB> It is not linked with the standard RTL.  Ring 0 OS/2 code is built
 MB> entirely from the ground up, using the C compiler as a code generator
 MB> only.
 Not much of it is Ring0. The things you do in Ring0 don't have much use
 for C RTL anyway.


 MB> Also, a large part of the OS/2 kernel is written in assembly
 MB> language for performance reasons;
 Not true ... hardly any is in assembler.


 MB> no C compilers exist which can make
 MB> 32-bit code that operates in the 16-bit selector:offset environment.
 The only code thats in 16bit sel:offset is bits of device driver, and
 which is generally written in C, but is not 32 bit as you say.

 AG> Can I share the system copy of C RTL, and if so, how?

 MB> There is no system copy of the C RTL.  The compiler and its libraries
 MB> are not part of the operating system in OS/2, as they are in Unix.

 And VMS.

 MB> EMX and C Set have the option to locate their RTL in DLL files.
 MB> Watcom does not permit this, or at least does not support it.  The
 MB> mechanism used by C Set is very different than that used by EMX, as
 MB> EMX guarantees that any program which works with the DLL version of
 MB> its RTL should work with any future DLL version of its RTL.

Sounds like I'll choose EMX. (CSet is on 52 Weeks delivery anyway.)

I can't see the point in having sharable DLLs if you don't share them
- unless you make a living selling DRAM.

Presumably plenty of other people will use EMX, and we can all share a
copy to keep the working set small.

Andrew




 
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