For a project I'm working on I wanted to use dll's.  DMD was lacking support. So I switched to GDC.

After some work and testing I managed to give dll support to GDC.

I've included a patch for gdc to allow it to support dll's.  I also got phobos to work as a dll. I've used it for about a month now and as of yet there are no side effects.

There is one flaw in the phobos.dll design.  If you use DllMain for your dlls and they are linked to a program with a library. Then the garbage collector will not exist at that time. I personally ain't found this an issue yet. But I haven't used Static constructors and the such.

I would love to see a GDC/Mingwn package on windows that comes with an installer , some libs etc ... can you post your binary somewhere ?  Or where can I find instructions on building gdc on windows with mingw ?


Thanks,
Charlie


"Venix" <venix1@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:dpmvf2$208o$2@digitaldaemon.com...
> For a project I'm working on I wanted to use dll's.  DMD was lacking support. So I switched to GDC.
>
> After some work and testing I managed to give dll support to GDC.
>
> I've included a patch for gdc to allow it to support dll's.  I also got phobos to work as a dll. I've used it for about a month now and as of yet there are no side effects.
>
> There is one flaw in the phobos.dll design.  If you use DllMain for your dlls and they are linked to a program with a library. Then the garbage collector will not exist at that time. I personally ain't found this an issue yet. But I haven't used Static constructors and the such.
>
>


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----


> #!/bin/sh
>
> rm -f *.o *.dll temp.a static.a lib/*.o lib/*.a lib/*.dll cp ../libgphobos.a .
>
> #Explode Static library
> ar x libgphobos.a
>
> #Grab Duplicate names
> ar xN 1 libgphobos.a zlib.o
> mv zlib.o zlib_d.o
> ar xN 2 libgphobos.a zlib.o
>
> #Grab Duplicate names
> ar xN 1 libgphobos.a crc32.o
> mv crc32.o crc_32_d.o
> ar xN 2 libgphobos.a crc32.o
>
> #Grab Duplicate names
> ar xN 1 libgphobos.a syserror.o
> mv syserror.o syserror_d.o
> ar xN 2 libgphobos.a syserror.o
>
> mkdir -p lib
>
> #Remove static only items
> mv cmain.o      lib/_cmain.o
> mv rundmain.o   lib/_rundmain.o
> mv dgccmain2.o  lib/_dgccmain2.o
> mv moduleinit.o lib/_moduleinit.o
> mv object.o     lib/_object.o
>
> #Build Temp lib
> ar r static.a lib/*.o
>
> #Build DLL
> gcc -shared -Wl,--export-all-symbols -o
gphobos.dll -Wl,--out-implib=temp.a  *.o -lstdc++ -lws2_32 -luuid static.a
> cp gphobos.dll /mingw/bin
>
> cd lib
>
> #Extract DLL Library so we only need one phobos library
> ar x ../temp.a
> ar r libgphobos.a *.o
> cd ..
>
> cp lib/libgphobos.a ../lib

Actually GDC built without a problem with cygwin and gcc 3.4.5 :).

Charlie


"Charles" <noone@nowhere.com> wrote in message news:dposb7$11c8$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> I would love to see a GDC/Mingwn package on windows that comes with an installer , some libs etc ... can you post your binary somewhere ?  Or
where
> can I find instructions on building gdc on windows with mingw ?
>
>
> Thanks,
> Charlie
>
>
> "Venix" <venix1@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:dpmvf2$208o$2@digitaldaemon.com...
> > For a project I'm working on I wanted to use dll's.  DMD was lacking support. So I switched to GDC.
> >
> > After some work and testing I managed to give dll support to GDC.
> >
> > I've included a patch for gdc to allow it to support dll's.  I also got phobos to work as a dll. I've used it for about a month now and as of yet there are no side effects.
> >
> > There is one flaw in the phobos.dll design.  If you use DllMain for your dlls and they are linked to a program with a library. Then the garbage collector will not exist at that time. I personally ain't found this an issue yet. But I haven't used Static constructors and the such.
> >
> >
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> ----
>
>
> > #!/bin/sh
> >
> > rm -f *.o *.dll temp.a static.a lib/*.o lib/*.a lib/*.dll cp ../libgphobos.a .
> >
> > #Explode Static library
> > ar x libgphobos.a
> >
> > #Grab Duplicate names
> > ar xN 1 libgphobos.a zlib.o
> > mv zlib.o zlib_d.o
> > ar xN 2 libgphobos.a zlib.o
> >
> > #Grab Duplicate names
> > ar xN 1 libgphobos.a crc32.o
> > mv crc32.o crc_32_d.o
> > ar xN 2 libgphobos.a crc32.o
> >
> > #Grab Duplicate names
> > ar xN 1 libgphobos.a syserror.o
> > mv syserror.o syserror_d.o
> > ar xN 2 libgphobos.a syserror.o
> >
> > mkdir -p lib
> >
> > #Remove static only items
> > mv cmain.o      lib/_cmain.o
> > mv rundmain.o   lib/_rundmain.o
> > mv dgccmain2.o  lib/_dgccmain2.o
> > mv moduleinit.o lib/_moduleinit.o
> > mv object.o     lib/_object.o
> >
> > #Build Temp lib
> > ar r static.a lib/*.o
> >
> > #Build DLL
> > gcc -shared -Wl,--export-all-symbols -o
> gphobos.dll -Wl,--out-implib=temp.a  *.o -lstdc++ -lws2_32 -luuid static.a
> > cp gphobos.dll /mingw/bin
> >
> > cd lib
> >
> > #Extract DLL Library so we only need one phobos library
> > ar x ../temp.a
> > ar r libgphobos.a *.o
> > cd ..
> >
> > cp lib/libgphobos.a ../lib
>
>

Recently, I started working with D again. It didn't take me long to discover another bug with my phobos dll.  The issue I found is related to garbage collecting. What happens is that memory I've allocated got trashed whenever it ran.  This was because scanStaticData was part of the phobos dll and only looked at it's static section.  I have modified parts of phobos to fix this. I removed scanStaticData from the gc files and put it into dgccmain2.d.  This way custom dlls can call scanStaticData(); and register their own static data.  Based on the examples given by walter on how to make a dll use a single gc. I belive that should prevent the GC issue.

Other potential issues:
- moduleinit.o is not dynamically linked.  This is becuase dlls need to
call _moduleCtor upon loading.  By dynamically linking it. Such function
calls cause all other Module Contrustors to rerun.
- object.o is not dynmically linked.  I belive it should be. But doing
so causes Access Violations when loading dlls of some complexity.  So
far I haven't come across any serious repercussions.

Included is the script I use to make the dll and a patch to give gcc-3.4.5 (Mingw) dll support.  This patch does the same as the previos one I offered. So its unnecessary to run the previous one.

Mingw:
   Download 3.4.5 sources.  Extract gdc files. Patch.
   apply my patch. patch -p0 < gdc_dll.patch Should work.
   run ./gcc-3.4.5-build.sh