Re: [Caml-list] Dynamic linking

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu>]

On Tue, 5 Apr 2005, Emir Pasalic wrote:

> We are writing a program that generates a C file, compiles it to a
> dynamic library, and uses dlopen (and such) to load it, execute it and
> bring its value into ocaml (bytecode) runtime. To do this, we need to
> use some of the functionality of the ocaml runtime (e.g., caml_alloc,
> caml_update) so we can marshall values from the C world into the world
> of ocaml. Our solution works on linux and macos platforms, but we have a
> problem trying to make it run on windows with Cygwin.
>
> So, we're trying to create a shared library on Cygwin that contains
> symbols such as "caml_alloc" and "caml_update".
> We do not know of a way to easily incorporate these symbols in the
> linking process, and so they remain undefined when we try to create a
> library, and undefined symbols are not allowed in Cygwin shared
> libraries.

The curent version of O'Caml under Cygwin doesn't support dynamic linking
in any structured way.  I was able to build an ad-hoc set of dynamic
libraries for standard modules, but I'm still in the process of modifying
O'Caml tools to do this seamlessly.

That said, there is still a limitation in Windows that any unresolved
symbols in a DLL have to have a *statically* known target, i.e., the
loader has to know what DLL to load the symbols from.  The two possible
workarounds are to a) extract the unresolved symbols from the executable
into a helper DLL that both the executable and the library are linked
with, or b) use dlopen/dlsym, as you did.

> Therefore we tried to resort to another method, where the calls to
> caml_alloc and caml_update are replaced by calls to dlopen and dlsym
> functions, i.e., we were trying to do this:
>
>        h = dlopen ("<the library name>", RLTD_NOW);
>        /* process error */
>        s = dlsym (h, "caml_alloc");
>        /* process error */
>        my_alloc = /* proper casting */ s;
>        result = my_alloc ( /* arguments */ );
>
> Assuming that this is possible, what is the name that should be given to
> the library?

Any name will do, as long as LD_LIBRARY_PATH contains the directory of
your library (yes, it *is* used on Cygwin for dlopen calls).  It doesn't
even have to end in ".dll".

> Else, is it possible to build a shared library on Cygwin that contains
> references to these symbols?

It is.  You'll need to create a helper DLL and an import library for it.
Then link your executable and the library DLL with the helper.  I would
have referred you to the (experimental) ocaml-3.08.1-2 cygwin package, but
it apparently wasn't uploaded to the main Cygwin package repository.  I
can send you the source/patches if interested.

> Note that all this works perfectly fine on MacOS and linux which allow
> unresolved symbols in dynamic libraries, but Cygwin simply dies. Any
> Windows/Cygwin experts out there who can help us?

I would be willing to help you build a small example app to get you
started.  Let me know where to get the source.

Igor Pechtchanski, the volunteer O'Caml maintainer for Cygwin
-- 
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