=============
Windows Notes
=============

:Author:    Stefan Eletzhofer
:Date:      2012-10-17

Abstract
========

This chapter includes notes on building and developing on Microsoft Windows.

Building and linking against DLLs
=================================

To have the linker create a dll it is enough to tell the linker to do so in
the makefile::

  dll:
    link /subsystem:console -out:some.dll /debug:none /dll some.obj

Unfortunately, the windows linker does not know how to link against a dll per
default.  The linker needs a '.lib' file to be able to link a dll. The
linker command above would create three files:

- some.dll
- some.lib
- some.exp

To link against the dll, specify the 'some.lib' file::

  test.exe:
    link /subsystem:console /out:test.exe test.obj some.lib

Creating a lib file manually
----------------------------

The 'lib' tool needs in order to create the '.lib' file a '.def' file,
which has to be manually created.  The 'dumpbin' tool can help::

  C:> dumpbin /exports some.dll
  Microsoft (R) COFF/PE Dumper Version 10.00.40219.01
  Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.


  Dump of file some.dll

  File Type: DLL

    Section contains the following exports for nxfs.dll

      00000000 characteristics
      507E6F98 time date stamp Wed Oct 17 10:43:04 2012
          0.00 version
             1 ordinal base
             2 number of functions
             2 number of names

      ordinal hint RVA      name

            1    0 000026C0 some_func
            2    1 00003B10 some_func_1

    Summary

          9000 .data
          3000 .rdata
          2000 .reloc
         1E000 .text

The 'def' file 'some.def' needs then to look like so::

  EXPORTS
  some_func
  some_func_1

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