Re: DLL and external references

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From: Carl Daniel [VC++ MVP] (cpdaniel_remove_this_and_nospam_at_mvps.org.nospam)
Date: 07/15/04 

Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 14:27:31 -0700

Victor Bazarov wrote:
> alias.name wrote:
>> Thank you, I was trying mimic the shared library behavior from Unix,
>> but since DLL are essentially EXE's and not just shared objects
>> since it won't work for my purpose.
>
> I am not sure I understand that statement about shared objects. In
> order to use shared objects on Unix, you still need to link them in.
> Each .so object serves as its own import library. On Windows a DLL
> is not its own .LIB, that information is pulled into a different
> file, that's all.
>
> So, mimicking Unix behaviour is what Windows does with DLLs.

Not quite. An .so can have unsatisfied externals while a DLL cannot. The
dynamic linker will attempt to resolve those externals when the .so is
loaded using symbols available in all the other modules loaded into the
image.

The key difference is that windows doesn't have a dynamic linker - only a
dynamic loader that does little more than update a fixed table of
entry-point addresses when a module (DLL) is loaded.

-cd

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