On Windows you have the LoadLibrary/GetProcAddress/FreeLibrary calls. On
Linux you have almost identical calls (dlopen and friends). I have no
experience of other OSes, but I think things cannot be much different. In a
future version of my open source C++ library (CXL, you can find it on my
site) I plan to create a wrapper for these things making them transparent to
handle either on Windows and on Linux

Just as an example, if you look at CXL-3patch1 sources, you will find that I
have a HiResTimer class which is implemented in two completely different
ways on Windows and on Linux, but when use it you write EXACTLY the same
code (and you have almost exactly the same results).

Creating a DLL requires some macro support for code (EXPORTS etc. you can
even make the source capable of being compiled into an app/lib or dll
TRANSPARENTLY) some linker options and a runtime loading mechanism (provided
by any modern OS,  EVEN Windows has it!!!).

Alessandro Coppo
a.c### [at] iolit
www.geocities.com/alexcoppo

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