When is shared library initialization function executed?

[Ali Çehreli]

And who is responsible for it?

I had issues with shared library initialization functions being executed 
only sometimes. That would result in shared library features not 
registering themselves with the loading program. (It would work when D 
program loaded it but not when C++ loaded the D library.)

I opened a couple of forum threads about this but luckily I worked 
around the issue.

My question is related to something a colleague told me today: A shared 
library's initialization function is not guaranteed to be called unless 
a feature of a library is actually used. This page seems to describe the 
same issue:

   http://interreality.org/~reed/dylib_init.html

Although that page thinks this issue may not be relevant anymore, the 
fact that my colleague had it with a recent C++ version tells me its 
still current.

What do you know about this? Is this the same in D? Is this simply a 
loader (linker?) issue, which would affect any language?

Thank you,
Ali