Re: SV: [xml] windows binary with different calling

["Peter Jacobi" <pj walter-graphtek com>]

Daniel, Igor, everyone on this thread,

>   YOU, yes you ! Why would you "be happy" about it ? You say "This might
> seem like" a positive change for Windows, why being so shy ? Why dou *YOU*
> need it, dammit ? 

I'll try to explain why the SOME_FUNKY_STUFF_BEFORE_EACH_FUNCTION
thing is often called for and, if I'm not mistaken, cared for in some big 
(and not so big) cross platforms projects, ranging from Mozilla, IBM ITU
downto libpng and zlib.

I'll do this despite the fact, that I'm fine with: "for simple cases follow 
Igor's advice, for complicated cases compile yourself, for ugly case
massage the headers". But I hope to clarify the case. Hopefully.

The issue arises when 
- you use Win32 (or OS/2 (or maybe some other OSses))
- you want to use pre-compiled binaries
- you have at least two DLLs who assume different calling conventions
without declaring them function by function in the headers OR you prefer
for rational or irrational reasons using a default calling convention 
different from the one used by the libxml2 DLL

The issue is caused by the sad fact, that using MSVC, you can give
a default calling convention as compiler option and an overriding one
function by function, but not a blockstructured or wrapper one, like the
C++ construct:
extern "C" { }

ATTN MSVC experts: or is there such a possibility buried in a dark
corner of the documentation? Please check.

The .def file approach takes only care of the linking step, but  it cannot
inform the compiler about the calling convention used. The link between
the calling convention problem and the .def file non-problem is only,
that resigning to the former and using SOME_FUNKY_STUFF, will
allow to use it also for __declspec(dll{ex|im}port) and the .def file
would become obsolete.

Regards,
Peter Jacobi