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Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:56:54 -0800
From: Ray Simard <ray DOT simard AT sylvan-glade DOT com>
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To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Questions about missing DLLs and program behvior, and symlinks   to  DLLs
References: <496AC6E9 DOT 3090709 AT sylvan-glade DOT com> <20090112161848 DOT GB5218 AT ednor DOT casa DOT cgf DOT cx>
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Christopher Faylor wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 08:28:25PM -0800, rhs DOT cygwin AT sylvan-glade DOT com wrote:
>> Hello!  I haven't been able to find anything about this in the archives.
>...

>> shows, programs simply exit silently and unceremoniously when that happens.
> 
> That is fixed in Cygwin 1.7.x.

Good news.
> 
>> Second, symlinking to DLLs doesn't enable programs to find them, as is
>> also shown below.
> 
> Right.  Symlinks are a Cygwin invention.  Cygwin doesn't start running
> until after DLLs are loaded.  So, since Windows does not know about Cygwin
> symlinks there is no way that they can be used to symlink DLLs.

True; they are .lnk files with a special comment, IIRC. I'd just like to
make sure I understand this.  Suppose I compile bar.dll and
libbar.dll.a, and then foo.exe with -lbar.dll, so it uses that DLL, and
these are compiled entirely within the Cygwin environment (thus using
Cygwin's gcc and related tools). I then launch it from the command line
of a bash shell running in a Cygwin xterm. What I think you're saying is
that there there is something that foo.exe needs to do before it can
understand Cygwin symlinks, and that something is done sometime *after*
it needs to actually load bar.dll, which prevents it from finding
bar.dll if the DLL's name is actually bar-froob.dll and bar.dll is a
symlink to it.  Is that the idea?

If so, then it's just a matter of putting the real DLLs in the paths
Windoze searches for them.  Symlinks would be nice, but if you can't,
you can't.

Thanks,
Ray

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