static linking issues

[RickP]

So I found the below code, but I'm thinking I can't have it both ways here. Because I want to statically link CEGUI to my DLL, but also want the CEGUI classes/methods exposed through my DLL as well. Yet you can't get the dllexport when static is defined. So if this is what I want is my only option to make a wrapper around the CEGUI stuff through my DLL? Because that would kind of suck and be very time consuming.

Code: Select all

#if (defined( __WIN32__ ) || defined( _WIN32 )) && !defined(CEGUI_STATIC)
#   ifdef CEGUIBASE_EXPORTS
#       define CEGUIEXPORT __declspec(dllexport)
#   else
#       define CEGUIEXPORT __declspec(dllimport)
#   endif
#       define CEGUIPRIVATE
#else
#       define CEGUIEXPORT
#       define CEGUIPRIVATE
#endif


[CrazyEddie]

Hmm. Some of the problem will also be that when you link statically, it will only bring in .o files from the archives that contain stuff you directly reference - so most of the CEGUI stuff is going to be discarded

The only (probably bad) idea I can come up with at the moment is to incorporate the relevant CEGUI sources along with your own code into a single DLL - this is no mean feat, but it can be done (brucey does a similar thing with the BlitzMax wrapper). This way you would dispense with all the linking issues and the problems of code getting thrown away when statically linking. The bad parts are that you'll need to somehow manage the build yourself - defining CEGUI_STATIC so the other DLLs are not required, but also exporting symbols from the main CEGUI code you're incorporating. It's definitely a hairy thing to attempt, but thinking over the issues again, perhaps the only viable solution?

CE.

[RickP]

Hmm. Some of the problem will also be that when you link statically, it will only bring in .o files from the archives that contain stuff you directly reference - so most of the CEGUI stuff is going to be discarded

Really? I wasn't aware of that. So there is no way to tell it to bring it all in no matter what huh?

hmm, this should be fun then

[CrazyEddie]

Yeah, this is another 'plus' point for static linking - you only distribute the minimum object code required for the app to run. Perhaps in CEGUI it's not quite as bad as it seems, since the level of granularity is the .o / .obj file and some way or another CEGUI itself 'touches' a lot of it's own classes during initialisation.

I'm not sure how to force inclusion of all objects in a static archive. You could dump the objects from the archive(s) and pass them manually to the linker - not sure how to do that, or if it's feasible on MSVC++ - though again it's not your regular every day development task

CE.

[jays]

I believe if you put all the functions you want included in the same source file you'll always get them all.