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digitalmars.D.learn - dll class inheritance

reply Heinz <malagana15 yahoo.es> writes:
Have you ever tried to cast or inherit from a class that´s in a dll?

At compile time you´ll always get symbol errors.

I´m able to create instances from a class with an export function that returns
the class but,
what can i do to make special uses of this class such as casts?
Jan 28 2008
next sibling parent Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
Heinz wrote:
 Have you ever tried to cast or inherit from a class that´s in a dll?
 
 At compile time you´ll always get symbol errors.
 
 I´m able to create instances from a class with an export function that returns
the class but,
 what can i do to make special uses of this class such as casts?
Typing's done at compile time, so you need the class definition at that point. You can use a base class or interface, but that's about it. Unless you make the code that uses the dll symbols into a dll, which might work.
Jan 28 2008
prev sibling parent "Jarrett Billingsley" <kb3ctd2 yahoo.com> writes:
"Heinz" <malagana15 yahoo.es> wrote in message 
news:fnlkma$10e5$1 digitalmars.com...
 Have you ever tried to cast or inherit from a class that´s in a dll?

 At compile time you´ll always get symbol errors.

 I´m able to create instances from a class with an export function that 
 returns the class but,
 what can i do to make special uses of this class such as casts?
I think you'd basically have to export (in the DLL) the typeinfo for the class, and then in your app, emit references to them using extern(D) and such. This is a terrible mess, and DLLs have far more issues than that -- getting a DLL to link to a symbol within the app that loads it is hackish and only useable in certain circumstances, and there are interactions with the GC that I don't think anyone really understands. Basically DLLs are terrible for anything more than a simple C interface, and their issues only make themselves known with D since it's got a lot more complex interfaces than C does. The equivalent things on *nix systems and Darwin/OSX (SOs and Dylibs) are far more powerful, and basically work like a compile-time linker but at runtime, making this a non-issue on those platforms. To solve this, there is DDL, D Dynamic Libraries, a library that allows you to dynamically (manually) load and link the object files produced by DMD on Windows. It's a little rough around the edges but does what it's supposed to. Now, deriving from a class that's in a library, that's something I don't think it can do, only because that has to be resolved at compile time, something that DDL can't be a part of :\
Jan 28 2008