Well, I'm more talking about why DMD cannot produce shared libraries (using Phobos) on Linux.  It seems to me the problems for Win32 are larger.

As for ddl - essentially, a runtime linker.  Given an obj file, it links it against the running program (provided a file listing its references) and provides methods to pull its symbols.

This allows libraries to function on Windows similarly to so files (reverse linking.)  I believe mingw32 is actually doing something similar.

-[Unknown]


Walter Bright wrote:
> Unknown W. Brackets wrote:
>> Shared libraries are quite popular.  To be honest, I'm no expert with them or I would try my hand (I actually did a bit, but I really don't have much experience with linking problems.)
>>
>> Would you have any suggestions on what one might do to better understand the problems Phobos currently has with supporting shared libraries?  If I understood the problems, I would be happy to work on a solution.
> 
> 
> I'd start by examining how DLL support is done for Win32 (i.e. having a shared gc and threading system).
> 
> 
>> Also, since it's a bit related - what is your opinion on the concept of ddl?
>>
>> It (the concept; ddl doesn't work at all for me no matter what I try, and seems overcomplicated in ways) seems like a perfect way to bridge yet another gap between D and other popular dynamic languages like Ruby, Python, Perl, PHP, etc.: ease of importing/using shared code dynamically.
> 
> I don't know anything about ddl.

Unknown W. Brackets wrote:
> Well, I'm more talking about why DMD cannot produce shared libraries (using Phobos) on Linux.

DMD can do it. It's just that nobody has fixed Phobos to do it.

Walter Bright wrote:
> Unknown W. Brackets wrote:
> 
>> Well, I'm more talking about why DMD cannot produce shared libraries (using Phobos) on Linux.
> 
> DMD can do it. It's just that nobody has fixed Phobos to do it.

Maybe I'm out of line here, but at this point of this particular thread, it would have been prudent to include some remark as to what sort of things Phobos might need to become better suited for shared libraries.

Every thread here has more readers than participants, and we must assume quite some of them might even consider doing something about the issue, given the smallest hint on where to start. Right?

(like me for example, who has decided Walter isn't interested in giving him a place to start on making Phobos on Linux capable of generating shared objects.)

-[Unknown]


Georg Wrede wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Unknown W. Brackets wrote:
>>
>>> Well, I'm more talking about why DMD cannot produce shared libraries (using Phobos) on Linux.
>>
>> DMD can do it. It's just that nobody has fixed Phobos to do it.
> 
> Maybe I'm out of line here, but at this point of this particular thread, it would have been prudent to include some remark as to what sort of things Phobos might need to become better suited for shared libraries.
> 
> Every thread here has more readers than participants, and we must assume quite some of them might even consider doing something about the issue, given the smallest hint on where to start. Right?