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Re: libltdl and Windows
From: |
Bob Friesenhahn |
Subject: |
Re: libltdl and Windows |
Date: |
Wed, 29 Sep 2004 17:09:36 -0500 (CDT) |
On Wed, 29 Sep 2004, Howard Chu wrote:
Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
Currently libltdl will attempt to load any file you request it to (and
some you did not) under Windows. Libltdl is currently trying to load
.dll.a files when it loads a .la file. This causes problems.
While there are valid reasons for *Windows* programmers to load .exe files
and possibly some other types, it doesn't seem to me that libtool (the
*portable* library/loader tool) should encourage loading anything but DLLs
so attempting to load anything but a DLL should fail. Does anyone know of
a reason that libtool should be willing to load anything but DLLs?
Thinking out loud ... not all DLLs are saved with a ".DLL" suffix. But as far
as libltdl goes, processing the contents of a .la file, I think it's
perfectly reasonable to exclude anything with a ".a" suffix. When asked to
explicitly load a non-".la" file though, it should just load whatever was
requested.
Are there any standard Windows DLLs which do not use the .dll suffix?
Can you think of any case where *portable* software would need to load
a DLL which lacks a suffix or uses a suffix other than .dll?
The reason why I ask is that libtool and libltdl are primarily
portability tools. It seems wrong to encourage programs running under
Windows to use libltdl for a purpose it is not intended for.
It seems to me that if a Windows program wants to do a
Windows-specific thing related to loading a file (e.g. loading a .exe
file or a resource file) that the Windows program should use
LoadLibrary(). LoadLibrary() is pretty easy to use.
Libtool already has a history of attempting to prevent non-portable
behavior.
Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden
http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen