[Mingw-users] Differences between .a, .so, .def and .dll.

[Nathan F. <na...@ya...>]

Hello David,

On Mon, 2004-04-12 at 08:06, David Bourguignon wrote:
> Hi Nathan,
> 
> (First, I hope my text will wrap correctly this time...)
> 
> I noticed on http://www.mingw.org/docs.shtml that a new paragraph
> on DLLs has been added:
> 
> For more information on dlls, see
> http://www.nanotech.wisc.edu/~khan/software/gnu-win32/dllhelpers.html
> 
> However, all the beginners' links on this page are broken! (I tried
> a search on msdn to find them again, without success.)
> 
> The only thing I found on the Internet is a very general
> explanation of DLLs on www.wikipedia.org
> 
> In fact, simply defining what are .a, .dll, .def files under win32
> and explaining the difference with .a and .so under linux (and the associated compilation process differences) would make me very
> happy! :-)

	A *.a file is basically an archive of .o files. If it's intended for
linking against a DLL it will only have the stubs to interface the DLL,
while others will allow static linking of the library.  A *.dll is
similar to a *.so file under linux with some differences. The *.def file
has the information required to link against a DLL. Typically the only
time you will need a *.def file is if your are linking against DLL's
that do not supply a MinGW DLL stub. Any elaborations or corrections are
welcome.

Regards,

	Nathan