Re: Re: pyrex as Prothon standard extension language

On Tue, Jul 06, 2004 at 03:31:02PM -0700, Mark Hahn wrote:
> Samuel M. Smith wrote:
> > The wiki assumes DLL interface. This is windows only. Shouldn't you
> > use something that is cross platform.
> 
> Anywhere I mention DLL I am assuming the Linux and Unix equivalents also.  I
> am just a win32 programmer so you have to forgive my use of win32 terms.
> 
> Prothon uses the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) and it has the routines to
> work with "DLLs" that are portable across all platforms.  They use the term
> "DSO" or something like that, whatever that means.

Roughly,

DSO = Dynamic Shared Object, a concept
DLL = Dynamic Link Library, the Windows implementation 
SO = Shared Object, the Linux (and I assume many other Unixes, but not
al) implementation

This is chronologically reversed: instead of starting with the concept
and then naming the implementations differently, various OS's picked
different names for the concept and then people decided this made
theoretical discussion too confusing and started using DSO.  And it's a
lie, because DSO started as the name of the implementation on yet
another Unix system, and it just so happened that it's the one that won
out as the label for the concept.  And it's another lie, because DSO
hasn't really won out, it's only used by a couple of large and visible
products like Apache and libtdl (IIRC), but a huge mass of theoretical
papers and stuff still use their own pet terms.  But it's accurate
enough for us.

Joe