From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu Tue Dec 12 10:37:36 2000 Subject: Re: mkoctfile From: Mumit Khan To: "John W. Eaton" cc: "Giancarlo Mascetti Ph.D." , help-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 10:37:33 -0600 (CST) On Tue, 12 Dec 2000, John W. Eaton wrote: > I don't think anyone has yet done the work to make dynamically linked > functions work with Octave on Windows systems. If this is not > correct, would someone who uses Windows and Octave and dynamically > linked functions please provide the details so that it can be made to > work by default in the Octave distributions? I remember building .oct files on Windows after mucking around with the list of libraries to link with and so on, but beware that the size is going to be *huge* even for a the smallest .oct file due to static linking of all the Octave libraries. The solution is to build Octave libraries as DLLs under windows, but that's much easier said that done. I did at one point, way in the past, made *most* of the changes needed, but it wasn't quite all there. The trouble with Windows DLLs is that you have *explicitly* import/export DLL variables (the functions can be transparently handled via import libraries), and that requires lots of painstaking work when dealing with source base that wasn't designed for it from the get go (which is most things written on and for Unix). The issue of C++ templates cause even more problems when it comes to exporting from a DLL, and gcc has quite a few known bugs/limitations in that area. This was top of my priority list, but I haven't had time to work on gcc and friends for the past 6 months of so due to other commitments. Regards, Mumit ------------------------------------------------------------- Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL. Octave's home on the web: http://www.octave.org How to fund new projects: http://www.octave.org/funding.html Subscription information: http://www.octave.org/archive.html -------------------------------------------------------------