Re: Auto-tools & Win32 & Borland C++ Builder

[Warren Young]

Axel Thimm wrote:
> 
> Where I am totally in the dark is libtool and dlls. Borland (or better said
> Windows?) seems to have three modes of library creation/usage

Yes, Libtool -- or rather, modern Unixes, and therfore Libtool also --
supports these modes.  Taking them in order:

> a) ordinary static (like .a),

You've got that one nailed.

> b) "dynamically loading a .dll": calling LoadLibrary

This is dlopen() under modern Unixes, and libtool puts a veneer over
that called libltdl.  See chapter 17 (18 in the online version?) of the
autobook.

> c) "statically linking with a .dll": like statically linking against a stub .a
>    which references the dll.

This is normal libtool *.so usage.

The main differences have to do with platform limits, not the
autotools.  For example, a Windows DLL can't reference symbols in the
linking application, whereas shared objects on most Unixen can.
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