Talk:Side-by-side assembly

Regarding notability
SxS is the technology used to load all system libraries and many non-system libraries in all versions of Windows as of Windows XP. Windows is the most popular operating system on earth, so IMO this is adequately notable. Reinderientalk/contribs 21:21, 19 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Notability is conferred through the inclusion of non-trivial references by multiple independent reliable sources, not by anecodatal evidence. The current references do little to establish why this is a notable technology. That's why the article was tagged. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 21:31, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

There are two million google hits for this topic, I am sure among these there is a good non-microsoft source. Quoting from the notability guidelines "it is important to consider not only whether notability is established by the article, but whether it readily could be.". I somehow don't get the incentive to slap ugly tags on pages and in which way this improves wikipedia, especially since a "not notable" tag appears to have been on this page for at least a year. By this I mean either the article should be gone by now, or the tag should not be there. I cannot but think this of this as the action by someone who has a non-neutral viewpoint on Microsoft. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Highlander (talk • contribs) 21:08, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Recent revert
This edit undid a considerable amount of copyediting for the extremely minor and contentious issue of mentioning operating systems that this technology is not available on. It should be reverted. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:18, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure, maybe you should first justify why advantages/disadvantage headings should be removed? It doesn't make as much sense without them... Reinderientalk/contribs 04:37, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * "so none of the advantages of SxS are portable ... to other operating systems such as GNU/Linux or Mac OS"? is Linux/Mac using windows dlls? i dont think so. so y u talking about portability of windows dlls to those systems? 137.132.3.6 (talk) 08:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Disk space usage WinSxS folder
The extra disk space usage isn't that much of a problem on modern computers. Reducing the size is possible by NTFS file compression, which will reduce the folder size to some 60-75% of the original.

april 2011. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.61.226.121 (talk) 22:16, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
 * ... and drops the computer performance to 1% of the original. Fleet Command (talk) 11:08, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, saying that the "extra disk space usage isn't that much of a problem" is absurd. The purpose of using a DLL in the first place is to allow common code to be shared.  If disk usage isn't a concern, then the entire argument of DLLs, "DLL Hell," and side-by-side would be moot, and every application would simply statically link all of its code.  Obviously, modern applications don't do this, so modern application developers are, in general, still concerned about disk space usage.  I'm a bit surprised that this article doesn't make note of the fact that this whole side-by-side architecture effectively makes DLLs useless for exactly these reasons. - LesPaul75 talk 03:47, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, that is your POV. As long as I am concerned, DLLs never meant to reduce disk usage. As far as I am thaught, DLL is mean of avoiding the "re-invention of the wheel" (i.e. re-writing the same proven code every time it is needed), teamwork (splitting development time between developers), sharing code between developers (e.g. DirectX, .NET Framework, etc.) and extensibility. Just look at the program folder of every computer program that you like. Most of the time you see DLLs there but only that program uses those DLLs. Fleet Command (talk) 16:53, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
 * No, a DLL has nothing to do with code reuse. You can use someone else's code by just compiling their source into your executable.  Or, if they do not wish to distribute their source, they can give you a "LIB" file, which is a library that can be statically linked into your executable.  The point of a DLL is, explicitly, to allow you to "Dynamically Link" to code, solely for the purpose of reducing the size of your executable. - LesPaul75 talk 18:40, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
 * And you have officially denounced all my books, training courses and my certificate with a highly debatable statement. Let's keep this by the book: Are you suggesting a change to the article or or are you just talking? If you are suggesting a change, do you have a reference? Is your source compliant with Reliable sources and No original research? Fleet Command (talk) 09:08, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
 * In brief: most modern computers have enough hard disc space to make SXS folder bloat not to have too much impact, though it is still notable as a disadvantage, so that should stay in the article. Discussion as to whether "DLLs have nothing to do with code reuse" (which is frankly bollocks) belongs on some other page, perhaps DLL Hell or DLL. Reinderientalk/contribs 02:54, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
 * So, what does a DLL offer, in terms of code reuse, that a plain old LIB doesn't? Was the person who named it "DLL" intentionally misleading everyone by putting the words "dynamic link" in the name?  I agree that this discussion belongs elsewhere (possibly outside of Wikipedia entirely) but I was just attempting to point out the absurdity of the very first comment about disk space usage.  And if you understand the purpose of DLLs, then you understand the absurdity of the statement. - LesPaul75 talk 06:09, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
 * DLL makes things like DirectX, Java SE, Adobe Flash Player, SCSI Pass-Through Direct and Firefox Plug-ins possible. Sharing source code is not a thing of proprietary software. (Even if it was, having to recompile the source code of DirectX each time means an additional 2000 hours of compiling for each computer game project.) DLL offers other benefits like explicit runtime linking, memory and page management, on-demand loading and unloading, and plug-ins. Fleet Command (talk) 09:56, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the problem here is that there is some misunderstanding about what a "LIB" is. It is exactly like a DLL except that it is linked statically.  You could link all of DirectX or any of those other technologies statically, and you do not need to recompile a LIB before linking it.  The reason for linking something dynamically is so that every application that uses DirectX, for example, does not need to contain the entire DirectX library inside its EXE image.  It's simply an issue of executable size, and nothing else.  It has nothing to do with proprietary software, either, because a LIB is a binary image, just like a DLL.  This discussion has circled around over this misunderstanding and it's a waste of space on this talk page.  If you'd like to discuss it further, I've copied it over to my talk page.  It's fine with me if this discussion is removed from this talk page entirely, but I won't do so without the permission of the other commenters here. - LesPaul75 talk 18:21, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Disk space usage is not the issue, rather the use of dlls was to avoid multiple copies of the same library to exist in different processes in MEMORY. Memory is a lot more scarce than disk space and should not be wasted. While disk space should not be wasted either, having muliple versions of the same dlls on disk will not slow your computer down and will not waste memory. So extra disk usage is not a problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrisbr73 (talk • contribs) 18:22, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Memory is a lot more scarce than disk space and should not be wasted. This is definitely true today, but you must not forget that the DLL system was invented in the mid 1980s (DLLs where already supported in OS/2 1.0, which was developed from 1983 or 1985, depending on the source and it was released in 1987), at this time, many people did have not hard disks at all, but OS/2 only ran on PCs with hard disks, but still some of these PCs only had 5 MB hard disk space. Also if you compare, that OS/2 1.0 has a minimum requirement of a 5 MB HDD and 2 MB RAM, it should be clear that disk space was at least as scares as memory at this time. --MrBurns (talk) 14:43, 4 November 2014 (UTC) PS: if the text is not shown in the book I linked above, increase the zomm factor by one step, at least this worked on my browser. --MrBurns (talk) 15:06, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

NPOV, reliable sources
I believe this edit to be unconstructive for not adhering to the neutral point of view and not specifying a reliable source for the statement. It is original research based on output that can be subjectively interpreted in thousands of ways. It is not a valid reference for your personal point of view. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:28, 23 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Side note for the record: The internet archive link that is now being used to fix the link has originally been created using "save in the Internet Archive" by me. Thank you for using it. I still believe that it is not a reliable source, though. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:42, 5 July 2018 (UTC)