From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 12:34:04 -0700
From: Roman Shaposhnick <rvs@sun.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Install from CD fails
Message-ID: <20060419193403.GA7976@submarine>
References: <905a9ed2fd4bfc85f6f2764c8efaa0f7@quanstro.net>
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On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 09:35:27PM -0500, erik quanstrom wrote:
> i think there is a #3 here.  extension.
>
> dynamic linking allows one to extend a program without inventing a metalanguage.
> i believe there is a paper on how inferno's shell uses this to nice effect.

  I think you're confusing two notions here. What you're talking about
  sounds more like dynamic loading, not dynamic linking. And with dynamic
  loading the control is *explicitly* at client's possession. You're
  supposed to know what to dlopen, what to look for inside, etc. Such
  a controlled environment lets you be much more precise and avoid
  many of the shortcomings of the true "dynamic linking".

  Now, it would be interesting to know what others think about the need
  for dynamic loading in Plan9.

  Personally, my dream has always been to make all of the applications
  which rely heavily on console input-output to be dynamically loaded
  on top of each other, so that when I do something like:

    $ bash
    <long session with bash, with lots of useful stuff in history and such>
    $ gdb

  I don't leave shell (and lose all of the context) but I rather have
  my shell augmented with gdb commands. Sort of like Tcl works with
  external modules.

  Have anybody thought about anything likes this ?

Thanks,
Roman.