[tenfingers]

Approaches similar to unexec() are quite common in lisp-like environments, so emacs doesn't come as a "surprise" here.

There's no reason emacs needs to use the glibc's malloc implementation though, especially given emacs has it's own built-in (and probably neglected) malloc for other platforms.

[mcguire]

Yep. Emacs builds and runs (and presumably unexecs) on many non-glibc platforms. This is more likely an optimization for it on glibc.

"According to Paul Eggert, making unexec more portable has been on the to-do list for a while, "and this will light more of a fire under it". Concerns that Emacs might not build using a new Glibc API (which has not even been written yet) that came up earlier in the thread are not a problem, he said. "Emacs should still build and run even if the glibc API is changed, as Emacs ./configure probes for the glibc malloc-related API and falls back on its own malloc implementation otherwise.""

And there's the dreaded autoconf doing it's job.

[justincormack]

Well no it does not unexec on other platforms. And the figures in the article suggest it is annoyingly slow to start on other platforms. This is all about making the Gnu editor work well on the Gnu OS. It builds and runs elsewhere but startup is slow.