Stdcall and DLL tools of MSVC and MinGW

Stdcall and DLL tools of MSVC and MinGW

The  __stdcall  calling convention has been there for a very long time. When the older calling conventions like  __pascal  fell into oblivion,  __stdcall became the standard calling conventions of Win32 API functions. Unlike  __cdecl  (the  native  calling convention of C/C++), it is supported in C/C++, Visual Basic, Java, and other languages alike, which makes it the first choice when building a DLL for cross-language use.

The internal representations of both __cdecl and __stdcall functions have decorations. In MSVC (Microsoft Visual C++) and MinGW (Minimalistic GNU for Windows) GCC, __cdecl function will be prefixed an underscore, and __stdcall functions will have the beginning underscore as well as be appended by the at-sign (@) followed by the number of bytes in the argument list. So, double __cdecl sin(double) will be decorated as _sin, and double __stdcall sin(double) will be decorated as _sin@8.

But things are not that simple. The decorations could change when they appear in DLLs or when they are produced by different compilers. The following table lists the names as are produced by MSVC, MinGW, Digital Mars C/C++ Compiler (DMC), Borland C++ Compiler/C++ Builder (BCC): 
 

Calling Convention	Internal*	MSVC DLL (w/ DEF)	MSVC DLL (dllexport)	DMC DLL	MinGW DLL	BCC DLL
__stdcall	_Function@n	Function	_Function@n	_Function@n	Function@n	Function
__cdecl	_Function	Function	Function	Function	Function	_Function

^* For all but BCC, which has the same naming convention for symbols in code and exported name in DLL.

What a mess (especially when you notice that, for MSVC, whether a name is exported by a DEF file or by the  __declspec(dllexport)  attribute affects its naming decoration)! And although the ending decoration clearly shows how many bytes the called function pops up from stack beforereturning, it is not necessarily the most frequently used form. E.g., the Win32 API functions in the system DLLs have no decoration at all, as in the case ones uses a DEF file when exporting functions with MSVC. Many DLLs intended for multi-language usage also follow this practice and use no decoration with __stdcall functions (although the Java Native Interface, on Win32 platforms, will accept functions either undecorated or decorated in the Microsoft way, the latter being the preferred form). The remaining part of this article is thus devoted to the creation and use of such DLLs with MSVC and MinGW, as well as the introduction and comparison of related tools (there are good articles at http://www.bcbdev.com/articles.htm explaining the complexities of DLLs with Borland C++ Builder, so I need not bother to say anything more about it).

Tools working with DEF files

First, I will talk about the DEF file format and the relevant tools used with MSVC and MinGW. Many intricacies lie here.

DEF file format

We care about only two sections of the DEF file: the LIBRARY section and the EXPORTS section. The LIBRARY section specifies the internal name of the DLL; and the EXPORTS section specifies the function or data items to export. A short example follows:

LIBRARY    testdll.dll
EXPORTS
    cdeclFunction                       @1
    _stdcallFunction@8                  @2
    aliasName = cdeclFunction           @3

This DEF file defines three exports for a  testdll.dll : the first one is a  __cdecl  function, the second one a  __stdcall  function, and the third one an alias of the first function. The three functions are also assigned  ordinals . A function can be called by its name or its ordinal.

CL

CL  can accept a DEF file on the command line, and it simply passes the file name to  LINK . E.g.,

cl /LD testdll.obj testdll.def

will become

link /out:testdll.dll /dll /implib:testdll.lib /def:testdll.def testdll.obj

LINK

LINK  is our most important tool when treating DLL and DEF files with MSVC. The command line mentioned in  CL  already shows the options commonly used when creating a DLL with a DEF file. The main point is: if we do not use a DEF file when creating a DLL, the exported name of a  __stdcall  function will be _Function@n ; but if we use a DEF file, the exported name could be either  Function  or  _Function@n ; if both names appear, only the undecorated form is used. But it is possible to get both forms of exports (similar to the  --add-stdcall-alias  option of GNU  ld  and  dllwrap ), when we have the following line in the EXPORTS section (notice that the order cannot be reversed):

TestFunction = _TestFunction@4

Another thing to notice when we use the above line:  LINK  will export both  TestFunction  (or any alias name) and  _TestFunction@4  from the DLL, but  only _TestFunction@4  (the internal name) will be output to the import library: in no case will a program linked with the import library call the function by TestFunction !

LIB

If we have the DLL from somebody else (no source available), and we have the DEF file, the easiest way to create an import library is to use the  LIB  tool. The following syntax is often enough (check  MSDN  for more details):

lib /def:DEF_file

Nota bene : 1) it seems  LIB  does not accept aliased forms (it will simply ignore the part after the equal-sign); 2) it assumes all functions in the DEF file __cdecl . The second point lies in the fact that the import library it produces will map each symbol in the DLL to an internal name with an underscore prefixed, i.e., the linker using the import library will try to resolve an undefined symbol  _Function  to the symbol  Function  in the DLL. It takes no special care of the  __stdcall  calling convention. With some techniques we could use  LIB  to produce import libraries for  __stdcall  functions, but the caller could only call them by ordinal, not by name. The details are left as an exercise  :-) .

gcc

Here we use  gcc  to call  ld . The reason why we do not use  ld  directly is that using  gcc  is generally more convenient. The  -shared  option is specially designed to produce DLLs. We could also use the  -Wl  option to pass special link options.

ld

GNU  ld  has many options regarding DLLs, but we shall only focus on four (help information follows):

--add-stdcall-alias                Export symbols with and without @nn
--kill-at                          Remove @nn from exported symbols
--out-implib <file>                Generate import library
--output-def <file>                Generate a .DEF file for the built DLL

Either  gcc  or  ld  can accept a DEF file directly on the command line. When we have the following line in the EXPORTS section,

TestFunction = TestFunction@4

both symbols will be exported to the DLL. This behaviour is different from  dllwrap , which we shall talk of immediately.

dllwrap

GNU  dllwrap  could produce a DLL by a DEF file. We generally use  dllwrap  in the following syntax,

dllwrap --def DEF_file -o DLL_file OBJ_files [--output-lib LIB_file]

and  dllwrap  will transparently call  gcc ,  ld , and  dlltool  to fulfil its task. If  dllwrap  is asked to produce an import library ( --output-lib ), it will let dlltool  do it. Unlike  LINK  or  ld , when  dllwrap  encounters a line in the EXPORTS section like

TestFunction = TestFunction@4

it will export  TestFunction  but not  TestFunction@4 , and only  TestFunction  is output to the import library (somehow similar to  LIB ).

dlltool

GNU  dlltool  may be used to create the files needed to build and use dynamic link libraries (DLLs). The following options are of interest to us currently:

-l --output-lib <outname> Generate an interface library.
-D --dllname <name>       Name of input dll to put into interface lib.
-d --input-def <deffile>  Name of .def file to be read in.
-U --add-underscore       Add underscores to symbols in interface library.
-k --kill-at              Kill @<n> from exported names.

dlltool  works like  LIB , but it has its special feature: the  -U  option makes the items in the DEF file map to symbols prefixed with an underscore in the DLL, and the  -k  option makes the items in the DEF file map to symbols stripped of  @n  in the DLL.

pexports

This is a stand-alone open-source tool to produce a DEF file from a given DLL. It is not distributed with MSVC or MinGW, and you may choose to download here  if you do not find it elsewhere.

The __stdcall DLL and the import library

Having learnt so much about the tools, now we are ready to do what we wanted. We still need  sed  (search on the Internet if you do not already have this useful tool), and a knowledge of regular expression is required to understand thoroughly how it works.

Microsoft Visual C++

The simplest way to produce a DLL is to use the  /LD  command-line option of  CL :

cl /LD OBJ_files

The resulting DLL will have exported names like  _MyFunction@8 , as is shown in the `MSVC DLL (no DEF)' column above. To create symbols with no decoration, we must use a DEF file. The following is an automatic way to create a DEF file from the DLL if  __declspec(dllexport)  is used to indicate which functions to export:

link /out:DLL_file /dll OBJ_files
pexports DLL_file | sed "s/^_\([[:alnum:]_]\+\)@[[:digit:]]\+/\1/" > DEF_file

Once you have the object files and the DEF file, creating the DLL and the import library can be done in one step:

link /out:DLL_file /dll /def:DEF_file /implib:LIB_file OBJ_files

And you are free to use the DLL and the import library now as you wish.

MinGW GCC

If we do not need to control which functions to export except by  __declspec(dllexport) , we can type:

gcc -shared -o DLL_file OBJ_files -Wl,--output-def,DEF_file
gcc -shared -o DLL_file OBJ_files -Wl,--kill-at
dlltool -d DEF_file --dllname DLL_file --output-lib LIB_file --kill-at

If we want to use a DEF file to control which functions to export, we can start by (assuming  __declspec(dllexport)  is used to indicate which functions to export)

gcc -shared -o DLL_file OBJ_files -Wl,--kill-at,--output-def,DEF_file

to produce a DEF file with exports like " Function = Function@n @Ordinal ". After editing it to our will, the following commands will finish the job:

dllwrap --def DEF_file -o DLL_file OBJ_files
sed "s/[[:alnum:]_]\+ *= *//" DEF_file > New_DEF_file
dlltool -d New_DEF_file --dllname DLL_file --output-lib LIB_file --kill-at

And the import library is now at your hand to use. 
 

I am not sure whether I have stated clearly, but I have listed all my findings when I struggled to find out how to use the DLL tools properly and how to deal with __stdcall functions in DLLs. Hope you find it useful.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: The MinGW mailing list provided much useful information; Luke Dunstan provided important suggestions and corrections.

2002-8-20, written by Wu Yongwei 
2003-3-6, last revised by Wu Yongwei

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