Peter Gerwinski peter@gerwinski.de wrote:
Sounds mostly okay - except that with Win32, a DLL does not need to have the extension '.dll' (for example, Win32 device drivers are just DLLs with the same interface, and with the extension '.drv' ). A Win32 DLL can have any extension, or no extension at all. Thus it might be that the extension will need to be specified. On the other hand, I suppose that perhaps GPC can presume the extension '.dll' unless another extension is suppled. However, how do you then deal with a case where someone has written a DLL but does not want to give it any extension?
Let GPC first search for the name 'foo' as given, second for 'foo.dll' or 'libfoo.so' (depending on the OS) and last for 'libfoo.a'.
Perhaps we are talking at cross-purposes here! The Win32 problem will occur not a compile or link time, but at runtime, when the program is trying to link to the DLL. I am not sure whose job it is to search for the DLL at this point - whether it is the compiler's job or the OS (I suspect that it is the job of the OS which should then raise an exception if it cannot find the DLL).
Best regards, The Chief -------- Dr. Abimbola A. Olowofoyeku (The African Chief) Email: laa12@keele.ac.uk Homepage: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/African_Chief/ Author of: Chief's Installer Pro v5.00 for Win32 ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/win95/install/chief500.zip