[Mingw-users] Re: Generic DLL questions

[Stefan B. <sb...@sb...>]

Brian Dessent wrote:
> Stefan Bellon wrote:

> > Ok, I see. However, this doesn't work if the foo.exe itself depends
> > on the DLL. So, circular dependencies are impossible, correct?

[snip]

Thanks, this is _very_ valuable information.

> > > 2) Look up the symbol at runtime. Read up on GetProcAddress() and
> > > GetModuleHandle().
> > 
> > And how would I link the DLL itself using this second approach?

> If you use GetProcAddress then you are doing run-time (sometimes
> called dynamic) linking - the analogy to dlopen()/dlsym() on *nix. 
> This means that all calls to imported routines go through function
> pointers and there are no symbols to resolve at link-time, because
> the linker has no knowledge of what you're doing.

Yes, I pretty much understand all of that. But in your example you
assume the DLL "foo.dll" to exist. My question is: How do I _create_
this foo.dll? At present I cannot build the DLL because of undefined
references back into the main program. So, even with this second
approach originally mentioned I do have to create an import library for
the main .exe in order to build that DLL at all. Right?

-- 
Stefan Bellon