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X-Hacker.org- Blinker 5.10 Online Reference - <b> incremental linking</b> http://www.X-Hacker.org [<<Previous Entry] [^^Up^^] [Next Entry>>] [Menu] [About The Guide]
 Incremental linking
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 Blinker is able to link CA-Clipper applications incrementally, i.e. to
 re-link only those parts of an application which have changed since the
 previous link. This provides the fastest link speed and can greatly reduce
 the time required to develop a program.

 Incremental linking is the default and is entirely transparent during
 development. A full link occurs only when necessary, in practice after every
 five or ten links, and with no intervention from the user.

 The information needed by Blinker to link incrementally is stored in a
 special file with an extension of .BIF. The .BIF file normally has the same
 name as the executable file, but can be changed if the developer so desires.
 A full link can be forced at any time either by deleting the .EXE file or
 the .BIF file.

 When incremental linking is enabled, Blinker adds a certain amount of
 `padding' to the end of each procedure or function in the .EXE file to
 accommodate program changes. When the additional code exceeds this amount, a
 full link will occur automatically. Blinker indicates that it has performed
 a full link so the developer can decide whether or not to increase the pad
 size.

 A possible drawback of incremental linking is increased program memory
 requirement. This is a result of the additional padding in the .EXE file and
 the fact that Blinker does not compress the CA-Clipper symbol table when
 incremental linking is enabled.

 Incremental linking should always be disabled for the final link before
 distributing a program, in order to remove the extra padding and to enable
 packing of the CA-Clipper symbol table. To do so, simply add the command
 BLINKER INCREMENTAL OFF to the top of the link script file and relink.
 Turning off incremental linking in real mode programs also causes all
 CA-Clipper code, from both .OBJ files and .LIB files, and from both inside
 and outside the BEGIN/ENDAREA, to be automatically overlaid and passed to
 the CA-Clipper 5.x dynamic paging system. The paging system provides
 extremely fast, memory efficient overlaying of CA-Clipper code with
 automatic use of expanded memory if it is available.

 Note:
 During an incremental link, only the changed .OBJ files are re-linked.
 Any changes which have been made to the link file between incremental links
 will not take effect until the next full link unless the link file has
 changed in size, in which case a full link will be forced automatically.

 Note:
 Do not run the external resource compiler RC on incrementally linked
 programs, as it will modify the program significantly, and cause the next
 attempted incremental link to fail, possibly with a GPF in Blinker itself.
 In practice, there should not be any need to use the external RC anyway,
 since the Blinker link script command RC <filename> can be used to add
 resources to Windows programs at link time.

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