From: Hidetoshi NAGAI <nagai@...>
Date: 2011-04-06T05:37:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Tk and Tile with Tk8.5

From: Albert Schlef <albertschlef@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Tk and Tile with Tk8.5
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2011 23:13:53 +0900
Message-ID: <556a229f4b3527c589df7da1a9695e2f@ruby-forum.com>
> > The following depend on an unofficial feature of ruby's dll loading.
> > At present, it will work. But I don't recomment it.
> 
> BTW, what's here isn't an official feature? I do "ri Kernel#require" and 
> (I think) it describes everything needed to make this work: Ruby first 
> looks for an .rb file (this enables us to inject our loader script), and 
> then it's possible to explicitly load a .so (or .dll). So why isn't your 
> trick future-proof?

It depends on "how to find an entry point function of a DLL".
Ruby's current DLL loader decides a name from a filename of DLL, 
that is, cuts a left most string from a DLL filename before first dot
and links it after a string "Init_".
So, for "tcltklib.so", "tcltklib.84.so", "tcltklib.8.5.9.so" and so
on, the loader calls a function "Init_tcltklib()".
But for "tcltklib_84.so" (and others), the loader tries and fails to
call a function "Init_tcltklib_84".
This is the reason of why a DLL filename is limitted on my trick.

The rule about "first dot" is NOT a specification of Ruby's DLL loader.
It may be changed in the future.
-- 
Hidetoshi NAGAI (nagai@ai.kyutech.ac.jp)
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Kyushu Institute of Technology