So this is kind of an open ended question, just looking for
advice on doing it in general, if it's possible, and doing it
specifically in D on windows. I am not super familiar with how
shared libraries work so I had some questions.
I would like to attempt to use D to write scripts for a game
engine I am working on. The goal is to have the ability to
externalize the code that is specific to an individual game or
level instead of just compiling it all into the engine it self. I
want to be able to treat them as resources similar to other asset
files such as images or models. A secondary goal is to be able to
reload them at runtime for iteration.
So with that in mind, my general plan was to compile them into
dll's and load them at runtime. My understanding is that to make
it work, each dll will need to have an entry point that registers
its data with the rest of the engine but I am unclear of some of
the details or even if it is possible.
I am unsure of how to give the library access to the rest of the
engine. For instance, I have some global data in the engine. How
do I go about making sure the dlls have access to that data, is
there a way to make sure the dll will share the memory space as
the rest of the program, or will I need to explicitly pass that
data into the dll to give it access.
Also I am unsure of how to go about keeping the engine code out
of the dll. I would like to keep the dll as small as possible. If
the dll accesses anything from the engine, how do I keep the
engine code out of the dll? Idealy I would also like to keep
phobos out of the dll as well. If the dlls get too big then it
will probably not be useable.
Is this even possible currently? Is this a terrible idea or am I
severely misunderstanding things? I think I heard that remedy
games did something similar, anyone know the specifics of how
they did it?
- Using shared libraries for extern... Tofu Ninja via Digitalmars-d-learn
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