How does Lisp start up, in terms of shared-library linking and loading?
This is a complicated answer. We start with some terminology: • Shared-library: A program unit that can be linked or loaded into a program, which usually has a .dll extension for Windows, a .sl extension for 32-bit HP-UX, and a .so extension for all other UNIX systems. Shared libraries come in three flavors: • The ACL shared library: This shared-library holds the base ACL system, and is sometimes known by the term “acldll”. On Windows it is known as aclxxx.dll, and on UNIX it is called libaclxxx.ext where xxx is a version number and .ext is either .sl or .so. • System libraries: shared-libraries that are pre-linked into either the ACL shared-library or the executable that loads the ACL library, or any shared-library on which a system library is dependent. This is a broad definition of system library, and can include any user-supplied library that has been linked into the executable. • User loaded libraries: These are libraries that are loaded with the Common Lisp LOAD function, but not
