Questions about memory and library

[bernard@labri.u-bordeaux.fr (BERNARD Sebastien [93-94])]

	Hello from france,
  I'am a mint user since a few years now (from the 0.6 version precisely) and
now  I'm a bit disappointed with MiNT for the following reasons :
  - I started working on it with a 4MB STE but it was slow and lacking of memory.
    so I went on a Falcon (8 months ago). It was faster but with still 4MB of
    memory. But it's still short of memory. Unable to compile anything with
    GNU and miniwin on desktop but little toys (files less than 60Kb) without
    running anything with. Using OUTSIDE make the Falcon crash after the memory
    has gone short.

  - So I ask myself, about three points that could be done :
     1- virtual memory :
       Looking the source of MiNT 1.09 allow me to think that everything is rea-
       dy for this but the code ( there is even an empty function - init_swap -
       for initialising the swap device ). It seems that virtual memory has been
       voluntary stopped at the memory protection. Is it interesting for anybody
       to develop virtual memory ? I am insteresting in it. But, maybe is there
       some development running ? Please, let me know.

     2- shared memory :
       For solving probkems due to lack of memory, a good solution could be the
       sharing of memory for libraries so we don't have to duplicate the code
       in the memory just the instance of variables. For this - it joins the
       first point - we have to extend the MiNT kernel : add the possibility of
       sharing pages of memory for root's process - or others' - .
       This could creates some problems with executables that could absolutely
       not be run under normal TOS ( but who wants downard compatibility ).
       This will be very helpfull for make compilations in severals directory
       where you can find up to 10 shells and 5 make running. We can make this
       by improving the memory protection. Every process could start to the
       same adresse ( relocation is no more needed ). The problem is that it 
       could not be done for the 68000 machines ( only MMU machines ).
       This leads me to the third points :

     3- a new executable format :
       For differenciating shared executables and normal executables, it could
       interesting to use a different binary format. I wish to use a standard
       format to simplify the porting of GNU software and getting fully funtionnal
       ports ( dump of emacs directly usable - straight port of GDB ). For this
       should we modify the Pexec call to allow the execution of new binary format
       and on the fly the working shell hack "#!/bin/sh" directly implemented.

  This is what I'd loved to see inside MiNT and the MiNTLIB. I wish I do it but
I don't know 680x0'asm. I'm not fluent in MiNT but I could try. If anybody is
interested, let me know.

  S. Bernard