Bob Rossi wrote: > I've recently converted pcre's (http://www.pcre.org/) build > system to use the autotools. > > The previous stable version of libtool, pcre-7.0, used to create dll's > on mingw. It would create > $ ls .libs/*.dll > > .libs/pcre.dll .libs/pcreposix.dll > > > Now, the new autotools version creates, > $ ls ../../pcre-7.1-RC4/prefix-shared/bin > > libpcre-0.dll libpcrecpp-0.dll libpcreposix-0.dll pcre-config ... > A user has complained that the new filename change, on windows, will > effect the way they have to load pcre as a plugin. They said that on > windows it's common to always name the dll simply pcre.dll and then > provide a coff file, which is metadata describing the version number > and characteristics of the dll. > > My question is, what's the correct way to name these dll's on windows? > What would be an appropriate response to this user?
AFAIK, the coff file is purely informational, and not involved in any way with the actual linking/loading - unlike the filename, which is clearly important here. The reason for placing the number into the name is to make it possible for multiple incompatible versions of a DLL to be present on a system without colliding - the aptly named "DLL Hell". I'd tend to assume that the only way that this will affect your user is that they will have to specify the new name - which ought to be pretty trivial. Perhaps you'd like to nudge them for clarification on why they think this is a difficulty? Numbering of DLLs in this way is perhaps a bit rare on Windows in general, but hardly unknown. A prime example is: msxml.dll msxml2.dll msxml3.dll msxml4.dll > Finally, here is the version numbering in configure.ac, > m4_define(libpcre_version, [0:1:0]) > m4_define(libpcreposix_version, [0:0:0]) > m4_define(libpcrecpp_version, [0:0:0]) > not sure if that's good or not. Those numbers mean: libpcreposix and libpcrecpp: this is the first release since versioning began. libpcre: this is the second release since versioning began, but the ABI is unchanged since the first release. Max.
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