Chris Fearnley: > It isn't relevant. I strongly remember that -N is for static linking > of a.out binaries. You remember wrong. The usual a.out executable file format consists of three parts: a 1 kB header, one or more 4 kB code pages, and one more 4 kB data pages. Thus, the minimum size is 9 kB. This format allows concurrently running copies of the program to share unmodified code and data pages. The -N option uses another format, which combines all the data into one part, with the cost that concurrently running copies may not share any pages. This is good for small programs, since they use much less disk space. This used to be very important, and probably still is for installation and rescue floppies. Since a typical small program has only one or two data pages, which it modifies anyway, it doesn't really matter if pages can be shared or not. Or something like that. It's been a while since I needed to know this. I'm told ELF changes the meaning or the behavior of -N, but I don't know details. -- Please read <http://www.iki.fi/liw/mail-to-lasu.html> before mailing me. Please don't Cc: me when replying to my message on a mailing list.
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