🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct2.193405.12772@njitgw.njit.edu> dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap) writes:

(a C RTL DLL)

>It shouldn't have to distinguish.  If all the entry points are
>standard C function calls using normal C calling conventions, any
>runtime DLL will work with any compiler.

Well - I think it's very rare that each C library in use today actually
matches up perfectly as far as entry points.  There are always some
internal support functions and what not.  You really need other name and
version identification.

(about DLLs in general)

>How would you prefer to implement them?  Surely you wouldn't want to
>eliminate .DLLs.  Then, each PM program would grow to gargantuan sizes
>(from hard-linking the PM libraries), and they wouldn't use new
>features as the OS improved.

I'll tell you what I would fix - automatic version support for DLLs.  What
is needed is support for multiple versions of the "same" DLL.  Right now if
you are writing a DLL and you want to do it right (IMHO), you need to
implement your own version support so that you can recognize if you are
mismatched with your caller.  Then, for upward compatibility you really
need to have later versions handle earlier callers.

It would be really nice if OS/2 took some of this burden, and had a way for
a DLL to identify itself with version information, and OS/2 would match an
application up with the appropriate DLL version.  Otherwise, it's too easy
to get a mismatched DLL and not know what happened.  The recent upgrade to
EMX.DLL is a good example of this.  People tend to post saying to get the
most recent EMX to make sure things are working - I'm just waiting for the
point when EMX for some reason changes so it's not completely backward
compatible - it'll be a big mess.

(Of course, a way to change LIBPATH dynamically after the system has booted
 would be a big improvement too)

--
-- David
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