From: Kent Dahl <kentda@...>
Date: 2001-12-01T16:58:11+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:27163] Statically linked extensions and deferred initialization.

Hi.

As I understand extinit.c, all statically linked extensions are
initialized when starting Ruby. As the numbers of extensions I compile
in increases, so does both the startup time and the total memory
footprint of Ruby. 

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get dynamically loaded extensions
to work for the platform in question, (mipsel-linux Agenda VR3) but that
solution would have others platform specific negative sides anyway. 

So, I've begun thinking about deferred initialization. The most
transparant solution would be to make some map structure in extinit.c
that maps the .so filenames (which get required, but doesn't exist), to
the Init_[extname], and then look up in this if require fails.

Are there any pitfalls I should be wary of? I don't want to go meddling
too much inside the C code of the require method, but I need this to be
transparent, i.e. the scripts should not need additional or changed
require statements.

Oh, and this might be a nice thing to have in the Ruby proper too, maybe
as an option? 

-- 
<[ Kent Dahl ]>================<[ http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~kentda/ ]>
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