Export and Protected Scoping in Dynamic Libraries

[Walter Bright]

On 12/19/2011 4:08 AM, Rainer Schuetze wrote:
>
>
> On 17.12.2011 20:50, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 12/17/2011 11:22 AM, Adam Wilson wrote:
>>> On Sat, 17 Dec 2011 01:33:33 -0800, Walter Bright
>>> <newshound2 at digitalmars.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> It isn't necessary to export a protected symbol in order to override it.
>>>
>>> I see, that's a neat little trick. +1 for D!
>>
>> C++ works the same way.
>
> You still need the protected symbol if you want to call the base class
> implementation through "super", or if you do not override the protected function
> in the derived class, so the base class member function needs to be placed into
> the vtbl of the derived class.

That's right.

I recommend in those cases to make such members "export" rather than "protected".


>>> I know DLL's are relatively new to D so not much documentation exists
>>> about how
>>> they work in D. I think this would be something good to document,
>>> especially the
>>> special behaviors for Windows. I have to admit that, coming from a C#
>>> and C++
>>> background, I've been a little confused by how the scope system works in
>>> relation to dynamic libraries and have been shooting the dark trying
>>> to figure
>>> it out. Thanks for the clarifications! Hopefully this lesson will
>>> become part of
>>> the D lore surrounding dynamic libs. :-)
>>
>> DLL's have been supported in D forever, but hardly anyone uses them, and
>> sometimes they get bit rotted.
>>
>> I strongly recommend Jeffrey Richter's book "Advanced Windows" for a low
>> level and lucid explanation of how DLLs work.
>
> sharing D objects across DLLs (as you will obviously need when deriving classes
> in another DLL) is not well supported, a stab at sharing phobos as a test bed
> can be found here: http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4071, but it is
> probably dated.
>