On 02/15/2015 09:00 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2015 05:50:07 -0800
>> From: Daniel Colascione <dancol@dancol.org>
>>
>>>>   #ifdef WINDOWS
>>>>   # ifdef emacs
>>>>   #  define EMACS_EXPORT  __declspec(dllexport)
>>>>   # else
>>>>   #  define EMACS_EXPORT  __declspec(dllimport)
>>>>   # endif
>>>>   # else
>>>>   #  define EMACS_EXPORT
>>>>   #endif
>>>>
>>>> That's because they should be exported by Emacs, but imported by
>>>> modules.
>>>
>>> Right, that makes sense.
>>
>> No it doesn't. Modules shouldn't be importing anything from Emacs: Emacs
>> should _give_ modules a table of all function pointers they need. It's a
>> lot less error-prone that way.
> 
> I don't follow: how will the linker succeed in linking the module's
> shared library, if you don't submit to it an import library with the
> symbols in that table you mention?  And how do you suggest to produce
> an import library, except by the above decorations?
> 
> What am I missing?

Emacs doesn't provide symbols to modules. Modules provide an
initialization function to Emacs: Emacs then calls this initialization
function with a pointer to a C structure containing a table of function
pointers. Modules call these function pointers to do their work. There's
no need for Emacs itself to export any symbols.