[fpc-pascal] FPC linker oddity

[Jonas Maebe]

On 21/06/15 22:20, patspiper wrote:
> On 21/06/15 23:08, Jonas Maebe wrote:
>> On 21/06/15 21:43, patspiper wrote:
>>> Changing the GetTickCount declaration to any of the following works:
>>>    Function GetTickCount: DWORD; external name
>>> '_$dll$kernel32$GetTickCount';
>>>    Function GetTickCount: DWORD; external 'kernel32';
>>>
>>> Why is the behaviour different between Linux and Windows?
>> ELF (used by Linux) and PECOFF (used by Windows) use completely
>> different ways of shared linking.
> So what should be done to remedy the Windows case when $LINKLIB is used,
> that is unless $LINKLIB is not to be used with Windows?

{$linklib xxx} can be useful on Windows if you have a DLL that has an
initialisation routine that you want to be run, but you're not calling
any code from it.

> Note that in the 2 'solutions' I gave, $LINKLIB is not needed and can be
> removed altogether.

That's correct. And the second way is the normal way to import routines
from a DLL under Windows (which also works under *nix; only Darwin is
different for legacy reasons: there you need the {$linklib xxx} to
ensure that the library is linked).

Using both {$linklib xxx} and "external 'xxx'" is best, since it will
always work on all platforms.


Jonas