[Mono-devel-list] Proposal: Library Loading

[Vladimir Vukicevic]

On Tue, 2004-04-13 at 18:50, Rachel Hestilow wrote:
> An idea:: Perhaps the config format could be extended so that DLL 
> mappings could optionally specify an assembly for which the mapping 
> would be applied?
> 
> For example: Let's say all your apps except MyLegacyApp link against 
> version 2 of a library. MyLegacyApp links against version 1. You could 
> then add something like this to conf.d:
> 
> <library>
>     <!-- Generic DLL mapping -->
>     <dll import="libfoo" target="libfoo.so" version="2" />
>     <!-- Custom DLL mapping for MyLegacyApp -->
>     <dll import="libfoo" target="libfoo.so" version="1" 
> assembly="MyLegacyApp.exe" />
> </library>

I like this, but then you lose the ability for the libfoo provider to
ship the mapping with the library package, because they're not going to
want to have to track which app is using which version.  The app itself
also can't install its own entry unless we use some sort of helper tools
for apps to register/unregister themselves, so we're back to the user
manually putting in these strings into the magic file.

	- Vlad