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Re: Compressed exec and core files
- From: Paul Koning <paul_koning at dell dot com>
- To: "H.J. Lu" <hjl dot tools at gmail dot com>
- Cc: Michael Eager <eager at eagerm dot com>, Binutils <binutils at sourceware dot org>
- Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 16:46:55 -0500
- Subject: Re: Compressed exec and core files
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <54C2A8BE dot 2020807 at eagerm dot com> <CAMe9rOruoc6sN6ukfgYKv6BY3YjFUFuUX7QCgRnQ_p2VmHTcVg at mail dot gmail dot com> <54C2AF81 dot 8050309 at eagerm dot com> <CAMe9rOpHYCpyfCHCwv9_U7iLF_RNOEGs=-TbfdURpBzRUAaYvg at mail dot gmail dot com>
> On Jan 23, 2015, at 3:37 PM, H.J. Lu <hjl.tools@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Michael Eager <eager@eagerm.com> wrote:
>> On 01/23/15 12:19, H.J. Lu wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 12:02 PM, Michael Eager <eager@eagerm.com> wrote:
>>> ...
>>> Are you going to fork/exec gzip/bzip2 for this or call zlib/bzip2-libs?
>>
>>
>> Could do either. Exec is simpler. libz.so is currently a dependency,
>> adding libbzip2.so wouldn't be a big deal, but this might be a slippery
>> slope, where each added compression results in another library dependency.
>>
>> Using exec means that the decompress program needs to be on the path, but
>> the failure mode if it is not found is pretty transparent.
>>
>
> I really don't like fork/exec. I strongly prefer zlib/bzip2-libs. You can
> use dlopen to load compression library on demand.
Agreed, fork/exec is a hack that should be used only if no other option exists. Libraries are far better.
paul