Re: mkoctfile

[Mumit Khan]

On Tue, 12 Dec 2000, John W. Eaton wrote:

> I don't think anyone has yet done the work to make dynamically linked
> functions work with Octave on Windows systems.  If this is not
> correct, would someone who uses Windows and Octave and dynamically
> linked functions please provide the details so that it can be made to
> work by default in the Octave distributions?

I remember building .oct files on Windows after mucking around with the
list of libraries to link with and so on, but beware that the size is 
going to be *huge* even for a the smallest .oct file due to static 
linking of all the Octave libraries. The solution is to build Octave 
libraries as DLLs under windows, but that's much easier said that done. 
I did at one point, way in the past, made *most* of the changes needed, 
but it wasn't quite all there. The trouble with Windows DLLs is that you 
have *explicitly* import/export DLL variables (the functions can be 
transparently handled via import libraries), and that requires lots of 
painstaking work when dealing with source base that wasn't designed for 
it from the get go (which is most things written on and for Unix).

The issue of C++ templates cause even more problems when it comes to
exporting from a DLL, and gcc has quite a few known bugs/limitations in
that area. This was top of my priority list, but I haven't had time to
work on gcc and friends for the past 6 months of so due to other 
commitments.

Regards,
Mumit




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