External library name

I see this pattern in C translated header often but I’ve honestly never
understood it entirely.

Why does this “cDllName" need to be added to every single function which
you could just use {$linklib xxxx}?

Furthermore, I’m not even aware that it’s possible to tell the linker that
you want to search for a specific symbol in a specific library so I wonder
does the external library name actually do anything or does it just call
{$linklib} behind the scenes? I’m on macOS and I don’t know how the linkers
work on other platforms so maybe that’s relevant too.

============================================================

const
  cDllName = {$IFDEF WINDOWS}

                     {$IFDEF DEBUG}
                             {$IFDEF WIN64} 'libraylib64-debug.dll' {$ELSE}
'libraylib32-debug.dll' {$ENDIF}
                     {$ELSE}
                            {$IFDEF WIN64} 'libraylib64.dll' {$ELSE}
'libraylib32.dll' {$ENDIF}
                     {$ENDIF}
             {$IFEND}
             {$IFDEF DARWIN} 'libraylib.dylib' {$IFEND}
             {$IFDEF LINUX} 'libraylib.so' {$IFEND};

procedure InitWindow(aWidth : Integer; aHeight : Integer; aTitle :
PAnsiChar); cdecl; external cDllName;
function  WindowShouldClose() : Boolean; cdecl; external cDllName;
procedure CloseWindow(); cdecl; external cDllName;

Regards,
    Ryan Joseph

_______________________________________________
fpc-pascal maillist  -  [email protected]
https://lists.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal