On Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 08:46:51PM -0800, collver@linuxfreemail.com wrote:
  | Hello,
  | 
  | >bash-2.05$ man nsdispatch | tail -6
  | >     Currently there is no support for dynamically loadable
  | >     dispatcher call- back functions. It is anticipated that this
  | >     will be added in the future in the back-end without requiring
  | >     changes to code that invokes nsdispatch().
  | >
  | >NetBSD 1.5.2                   January 19, 1999                      2
  | 
  | Would it be difficult to add support for dynamically loadable dispatcher
  | callback functions?

I've investigated this.  The simplest implementation method, using
dlopen() from within the nsswitch routines in libc, requires that
an application is dynamically linked.  Not all user-invoked tools
are dynamically linked at the moment (/bin, /sbin, parts of other
directories)

This is part of the reason for the proposal to switch to a dynamically
linked /bin and /sbin -- so that the tools there can take advantage of
dynamic nsswitch (and other) libraries.  Such a change would not be
made in NetBSD without the existence of a statically linked "rescue"
mechanism in place beforehand.

Luke.