> I've also always been amazed that nobody's written
> a linker with some sort of "dead library code" removal
> (where only those members of a .a library archive that are
> actually referenced in the code are linked into the
> resulting binary).
I think they do do this. It is amazing that there is so much bloat anyway.
But the bloat is mostly (I believe) _even with_ only those symbols that
are actually referenced.
> It seems like the UNIX standard libraries are causing
> more problems then they are solving.
I wouldn't go nearly that far, but, I do have some annoyance at the
direction they have been going, throwing in all the internationalization
and thread support and 64-bit stuff and NIS/YP and on and on and on...
> BTW: Tom, have you looked at asmutils?
Yes. It is on my list to re-review, but, in general, I find a floppy
offers a lot of space to have "real versions", and I don't like to put
someone in the position of getting "unrecognized option" if they do an
"ls -Srld" or something when they already have the anxiety of a failed
hard drive. There may be some of them that can pass my tolerance, but the
truth is I am wanting to go the other way, to put the real normal gnu
versions of things like "rm" and "login". My current busybox "rm", for
example, fails with "rm -fr", works with "rm -f -r", this is the exact
kind of thing you _don't_ want to have to figure out during a recovery.
-Tom
