[ksh93-integration-discuss] Re: [ast-users] /dev/tcp+/dev/udp notcompiled-in for Solaris ksh93r...

[Casper.Dik at Sun.COM]

>Some questions (CC:'ing Casper to have a look at the problem, too):
>- AFAIK none of { Xorg, Xsun, Mozilla. FireFox, KDE, Kerberos5, bash }
>uses libxnet... the question is: Why can't they use libxnet ?

One of the biggest issue by folding the socket/nsl libraries, regardless
of libxnet, is the huge pile of .data and .bss contained in libnsl:

% size /lib/linsl.so
575446 + 33881 + 22251 = 631578

Huge.

>- The majority of applications in OS/Net uses libnsl+libsocket and not
>libxnet (182 vs. 16) - is that just historical cruft that they do not
>use libxnet (sometimes all three libraries are used (like
>http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/xref/on/usr/src/cmd/cmd-inet/usr.sbin/ping/Makefile#43))
>?


libxnet requires some different compilation; for the most part they
are different wrappers around the same syscalls.

When functions are made standard compliant they are sometimes generalized;
that's why they're not fully compatible (different argument types:
see sendmsg/recvmsg).

Also you must note that libxnet is not a proper library; it's
a filter; it does not contain actual code but rather a view
on libsocket/libnsl/libc

>- How does libxnet interfer with SCTP support and libsctp itself ? For
>example libsctp links against libsocket and not libxnet:

libxnet doesn't define any real functions...

Casper