On Sunday, 15 August 2021 at 10:19:33 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
On Sunday, 15 August 2021 at 10:12:17 UTC, Timofeyka wrote:
Thank you for your reply!
I wanted to link to my project another project without source
code.
Yeah, that's not possible. You either need the source or a set
of D interface files that declares all the symbols you need.
Meaning, it is possible. On Windows where I assume these .lib
files are:
```
PS C:\Users\jfond> cat math.d
extern(C) int twice(int n) { return n * 2; }
PS C:\Users\jfond> cat mathuser.d
extern (C) int twice(int n);
void main() {
import std.stdio : writeln;
writeln(twice(21));
}
PS C:\Users\jfond> ldc2 -lib math.d
PS C:\Users\jfond> ldc2 mathuser.d math.lib
PS C:\Users\jfond> ./mathuser
42
```
math.lib is written in D but it could've been written just as
well in C or C++ or anything, as long as it's targeting the C ABI
in whatever language.
When mathuser.d is compiled, D does not need the source for
math.lib. That one extern(C) function without a body is
sufficient to, again targeting the C ABI, say "I am expecting to
be linked with a function like this", and math.lib supplies that
function at link time.
D is identical to pretty much every other native-compiled
language in this respect.
The question you probably want to be asking is, "given a specific
library from this vendor, what's the most *convenient* way to
link D against it", or "how should I tell dub to link this D
application with a .lib file in a parent directory", etc.
