[A83] Re: libraries

[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

[A83] Re: libraries


Op za 09-03-2002, om 09:11 schreef David Phillips:
> 
> What general problems are there to solve?  You're talking about assembly
> here.  There's no need for something like libc.  You have ROM calls for
> basic things like text printing and math functions.  For everything else,
> things are specific to the program.  This has been proven time and time
> again.  On the 89, they could make sense, and programs did seem to make use
> of libraries.  But it was also annoying to have to track down all the
> libraries required for a certain program.  If you look at any of the
> libraries for the 83 shells, you'll find that very few programs use them.
> ION has some good built in functions, which seems to work fine.  Usgard on
> the 85 originally had libraries, but no one liked them, so they ended up
> taking them out.
> 
> Give us some things you'd like to put in a library, and we'll tell you why
> it won't work.

Well, as I mentioned, I was thinking of creating a widget set library.
By providing such a library, applications could just say: I want to have
a text box control here on the screen and a button there. The library
would take care of reading user input, and notifying the application if
the button would be pressed. Though this isn't really that useful for
games, I believe this might make programming other applications much
easier.

And let's not forget there are two main advantages of libraries:

One advantage when compared to static linking of a library (e.g.
embedded in the application) is that dynamic libraries can be easily
upgraded if a bug is found in the library: just replace the library, and
all applications using it will no longer suffer from the bug.

And they (potentially) save you space. Especially when you create
libraries that only contain functions for one specific purpose, the
overhead generated by infrequently called functions is minimal.

I agree with you about the dependency problem, but I think it is
solvable by storing the dependency information (e.g. which version of
which library an app requires) directly into the app. One might even
create a program which automagically transfers the app itself and all of
its dependencies to another calc, or from pc to calc.


Greetings,


Meilof
Follow-Ups: References: