DLL vs Shared Library

[Alan McKinnon]

On Friday 31 March 2006 01:12, Michael T. Richter wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-30-03 at 15:55 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > In RealLife(tm) MS dlls are not versioned like ours are, so an
> > app has no easy way of knowing which version is installed.
>
> It might help avoid future embarrassment if you learned the
> technology you bashed.  

And you should read what I wrote instead of what you think I wrote. 
Philip Susi's reply explains the details, no need to do it again 
here.

> Here's a random URL from Googling "DLL 
> Version": http://www.codeproject.com/file/fileversioninfo.asp
>
> Note the APIs referenced there:
> - GetFileVersionInfo()
> - GetFileVersioninfoSize()
> - VerQueryValue
>
> So, you're absolutely right.  There's no way for an app to know
> which version of a DLL is installed.  If it is written by a
> dullard.

I didn't say 'no way', I said 'no easy way'.
I didn't say MS doesn't record version info, I said it does it in a 
different way to *nix, with undesirable side effects.

Why does this even come up on this forum though? Anyone who has done a 
reasonable amount of dev work on Windows knows that Microsoft's dll 
implementation is inadequate, that insurmountable incompatibilities 
*will* happen when the system is used *as*designed* and all solutions 
require a hacked approach that goes beyond the original design.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five