Well, one could also question the point of shared libraries in a system that doesn't support multitasking.
Dynamic loading has a point in so far as to load binaries based on the availability of hardware, as in the BGI drivers. Having the code to support all gfx cards in the exe would be wasteful, so it made sense to load them dynamically. C and PASCAl support that through their ability to define functions as data types. On Mon, 28 Dec 2020 at 22:30, tom ehlert <t...@drivesnapshot.de> wrote: > > Hallo Herr Ralf Quint, > > am Montag, 28. Dezember 2020 um 17:06 schrieben Sie: > > > On 12/28/2020 2:39 AM, tom ehlert wrote: > >> Hallo Herr Ralf Quint, > >> > >> am Montag, 28. Dezember 2020 um 10:59 schrieben Sie: > >> > >>> On 12/27/2020 10:54 PM, Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-devel wrote: > >>>> Hey, all! Just a question I've never seen addressed here - or anywhere > >>>> else, for that matter. > >>>> > >>>> Was there ever any "official" format for a shared runtime library > >>>> under MS-DOS? Windows has .DLL files, Linux has .KO files, and MS-DOS > >>>> had... what, exactly? In all my years DOSsing I've never heard of > >>>> anything official like this, so I'm pretty sure there was no such > >>>> thing (unless you count a TSR, but that's not really what I'm after) > >>>> but I figured it doesn't hurt to ask you folks, as you have more years > >>>> under various flavors of DOS than I. > >>>> > >>>> Any constructive feedback would be appreciated! :D > >>> Well, it is very simple. There is no such thing under DOS... > >> This almost would have been my answer as well. > >> > >> But I recently learned > >> http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=17354 > >> that there exists Borland BGI (Borland Graphics Interface) drivers > >> that are arguably equivalent to DLLs (for Borland compilers) as they > >> are separately compiled binaries. > >> So this is not a DOS, but Borland standard. > >> > >> I know of no other example of this. > >> > > Yeah, that came to my mind too, but then it is commonly referred to as > > drivers, so it is a border line case of this kind of functionality, but > > it is not a "shared runtime library under DOS"... > > 'drivers' usually refers to functionality available to everyone, and > the interface are defined by the OS. > > BGI 'graphic drivers' were only open to Borland compilers; I'd call > them runtime libraries. > > but this is more wording then actually functionality difference. > no point to have a long thread discussing this ;) > > Tom > > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
