start partial binary

[Brad Roberts]

BCS wrote:
> Reply to Moritz,
> 
>> I like to put some data into a binary
>> that should reside on disk even when the program
>> is started.
>> The data should be loaded in memory on request of the running part.
>>
>> The aim is to get rid of zip file distributions:
>> - need to be extracted
>> - files need to be keep together
>> Is that possible with D?
>>
> 
> I think most OS's map in the whole program but only load stuff on demand 
> using the page swapping and virtual memeory systems.

Typically not even the whole binary file isn't even mapped, only certain 
segments are.  For example, the debug symbol segment is not mapped into 
memory.  For the parts that are, every unix-like and windows flavor in 
use today does demand paging of both the executables as well as any 
loaded libraries (be they .so or .dll as appropriate).

Later,
Brad