Are you sure?

You import testFunc as normal import, the compiler ignores pragma(lib) - that's only for the linker which will ignore it too since the symbol is already in your executable.

A static linked function should generate a very small lib-file and yours look too big to me.

I don't know about LDC but with DMD I struggle with static linked DLLs because the library generated does not link to the DLL. To get right results, I need to pass the linker flag --L=/IMPLIB (or -L=/DLL for 64bit) to generate a lib-file that is really linked to the DLL later.

On Sunday, 3 July 2022 at 08:15:38 UTC, frame wrote:

100%, just try yourself.

Why would the symbol be defined in the executable? dimedll.d isn't compiled into the executable.

The code is using Phobos std.stdio.writeln templates, so the ~20 KB for both exe and DLL are to be expected and IMO absolutely acceptable.

DMD's DLL support is waaay behind LDC's, especially once stuff gets more interesting than trivial examples.

Only the -H switch or manual linker command generates a valid link to the DLL with DMD but then it's missing all the other library contents (also it needs SimpleDllMain or bails out linking errors to _calloc and Windows symbols) :\

app.d:

module app;
import dimedll;

import std.stdio;
import std.stdio : log = writeln;

pragma(lib, "dimedll.lib");

void main() { 	
   log("Lets build our own ime");
   testFunc();		
}

You should be able to change contents in the DLL and run the executable wihtout re-compiling (the library file should be round ~2kB).

PS: ddemangle just waits for your input. You copy in the mangled symbol like __D7dimedll12__ModuleInfoZ and press enter ;-)

On Saturday, 2 July 2022 at 14:32:11 UTC, apz28 wrote:

Thanks for the reply. Well, I am sorry to say that your suggestions resulted in failure.
First of all, when I used this command -- dmd -of=dimedll.dll dimedll.d dimedll.def I got this error message-
Error: unrecognized file extension dll.
So I avoided the -of=dimedll.dll part.
Then I compiled it with this command - dmd -H dimedll.d dimedll.def
And I got some warnings. Here are they.

dimedll.def(2) : warning LNK4017: EXETYPE statement not supported for the target platform; ignored
dimedll.def(3) : warning LNK4017: SUBSYSTEM statement not supported for the target platform; ignored
dimedll.def(4) : warning LNK4017: CODE statement not supported for the target platform; ignored
dimedll.def(4) : warning LNK4017: DATA statement not supported for the target platform; ignored
   Creating library dimedll.lib and object dimedll.exp

I know all of them are from my def file. Anyways, I stepped forward and tried to run the main file with this dll & lib.
So I ran this command. - dmd dime.d dimedll.di. But I got this error message.

dime.obj : error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol __D7dimedll12__ModuleInfoZ
dime.exe : fatal error LNK1120: 1 unresolved externals
Error: linker exited with status 1120

Does importing dimedll into app.d properly NOT link in the functions that are exported to the DLL? When I tried something similar with dmd, I had to create a .di file containing just stubs, otherwise it looked like it was ignoring the DLL and compiling in an additional copy of each fuction.