Re: [Mingw-users] Fw: DLLS __declspec(dllexport))

[Paul G. <pga...@at...>]

On 12 Oct 2002 at 12:28, Katy and Steve Lee wrote:

> 
> re my own post - ok I'm real stoopid - I was looking at an old version
> of docs.html - the latest is perfect.
> 
> I still wonder why gcc.html doesn not mention__declspec

	Mostly, and this is my guess, based on not much more than using Mingw for years, 
__declspec is not considered worth supporting by gcc because __declspec is not part of 
C/C++ standard definitions.

	Again, my guess is that __declspec is supported only in cases (Platforms?) where 
there is a necessity for it.  In fact,  __declspec is part of the Mingw runtime (that too is my 
best guess since I have not read through the entire Mingw runtime for a  very, very long 
time).

	And my final guess is that when you link using gcc/g++ (.dll or .a output) you are 
actually "spawning/launching" an "ld.exe" subprocess.  ld.exe is not, of course, gcc/g++, and 
ld.exe is what actually does the final linking, (best guess), even though you may be linking 
from a gcc/g++ command line directive, ie. gcc foo.c... or g++ foo.cpp...

	Paul G.