robertk@lotatg.lotus.com (Robert Krajewski) (04/05/91)
I'm new to Mac (as a programmer); I am pretty familiar with Windows, and I came from a Lisp background. The Windows and Mac are not dissimilar, but I can't seem to find the analog to Windows dynamic link libraries (DLLs). DLLs are a nice way to share code among Windows modules (both applications and other DLLs); in fact, Windows itself appears as of DLLs. The distinguishing features of DLLs are: * Ability to link to export procedures by name. Windows supplies a primitive called GetProcAddress for this purpose. Sometimes, the act of doing this is called ``dynamic dynamic linking.'' * Ability to use procedures from compiled code, assumed you had the right headers, and the linker knew that those external procedures came from a dynamic link library. * Ability to use other DLL functions. In other words, a DLL can use all the system services, within the bounds of their limitations. Is there any single facility that would do the same on the Mac ? I was thinking of two possiblities: * Drivers. For example, ATM is a driver, and offers ATM-specific services to programs that know about its existence. * Code resources in shared file. So, what DO people do about shared libraries on the Mac ?