Re: libltdl and Windows

[Bob Friesenhahn]

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