Am 01.02.2015 um 11:26 schrieb Vladimir Panteleev:
The Delphi programming language allows specifying the DLL name right on
the declaration of extern symbols:
function GetVersion: DWORD; stdcall; external 'kernel32.dll';
I would like to suggest adding something similar to D:
extern(Windows, "kernel32.dll") DWORD GetVersion();
Rationale:
This absolves the need for import libraries.
* Import libraries are a major and unnecessary pain in the neck when
using DLLs of any kind.
* Import libraries may need conversion from COFF format to OMF format
with a tool which is not included with D (coffimplib).
* Import libraries can *sometimes* be created from the DLL using implib,
but this does not always work, depending on the calling convention and
its mangling.
* Name mangling mismatches are difficult to diagnose.
* Import libraries cannot be used with tools such as "rdmd", except via
pragma(lib).
Any thoughts? DIP or not?
Please no. Import libraries are the way it was designed and it should be
used that way. I'm currently implementing D-Dll support for Windows with
dmd and without import libraries it will never work.
Also what you are proposing could easily be implemented by a library. E.g.
@dllimport("kernel32.dll") extern(Windows) DWORD GetVersion();
mixin DllImportFunctions;
Where DllImportFunctions would iterate over all symbols in the module,
look for the UDA dllimport and then attemp to load the Dll and import
the function.
Kind Regards
Benjamin Thaut
