Converting Microsoft lib (.LIB) to FreeBASIC lib (.dll.a)

AGS · Post by **AGS** » Jun 18, 2009 19:24

When you download a software package consisting of one or more dynamic link libraries (extension .dll) it is not unlikely for the package to also contain

- include files (extension: .h)
- Microsoft import libraries (extension: .LIB)

If you're lucky there will be .dll.a files (=fb import libraries) in the package as well. But what if the package does not contain .dll.a files?

This is what you do.

First go to MingGW on sourceforge

and download binutils and mingw utils from sourceforge (make sure you get the binaries). Obviously you'll have to unpack the downloaded archives.

You need three programs to convert files with extension .LIB to files with extension .dll.a
- dlltool;
- as;
- reimp.

dlltools and as are in the binutils archive, reimp is in the mingw utils archive. reimp is the program that will do the actual conversion (reimp needs dlltool and as to do it's thing).

An example ('how to use reimp').

Suppose you have downloaded a Microsoft dll called iup.dll and the import library that comes with it (called iup.LIB). To turn iup.LIB into libiup.dll.a do the following.

Type

reimp iup.lib

at a commandline prompt.
(make sure dlltool, as and reimp are in the working directory or in the windows path).

The result of the execution of reimp iup.lib is a library called iup.a That's almost what is needed but not quite. FreeBASIC needs import libraries to start with the word 'lib' and end with the extension '.dll.a' you'll have to rename iup.a to libiup.dll.a

After you've renamed the file to libiup.dll.a and copied it to the map where the rest of the FreeBASIC libraries are (something like c:\program files\freebasic\lib\win32\) you can almost start using iup.dll/iup.dll.a

Almost because you'll still have to convert the appropriate header files to FreeBASIC (one of these header files will include the statement
#inclib "iup").

End of example, end of message. Enjoy using reimp.

jcfuller · Post by **jcfuller** » Jun 19, 2009 9:39

AGS
I'm not sure the version but I don't have reimp ?

James

srvaldez · Post by **srvaldez** » Jun 19, 2009 13:01

you can download from here http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ming ... z?download

jcfuller · Post by **jcfuller** » Jun 19, 2009 13:36

Thank you gentlemen. This should be quite useful ( when I find the time to get back to Fb programming)

Jame

Landeel · Post by **Landeel** » Jun 19, 2009 15:24

Very useful. Thank you.

MichaelW · Post by **MichaelW** » Jun 19, 2009 18:59

Yes, thanks for posting this. I have had MinGW on my system for years, and looked in the bin directory many times, but never noticed reimp.exe. I tested it on the pdf.lib from the PSDK and it worked correctly.

Kenny80 · Post by **Kenny80** » Jul 11, 2009 9:23

Strange thing is that i get a .dll file instead of .a i both tried reimp name.lib and reimp -c name.lib still get a dll hehe

integer · Post by **integer** » Jul 11, 2009 14:58

AGS & srvaldez
Thank you both.
Good to know.

cha0s · Post by **cha0s** » Jul 12, 2009 3:11

Thanks for the great post!

sir_mud · Post by **sir_mud** » Jul 12, 2009 7:06

Kenny80 wrote:Strange thing is that i get a .dll file instead of .a i both tried reimp name.lib and reimp -c name.lib still get a dll hehe

By default Windows (stupidly) hides the extension so "libIUP.dll.a" would show in Explorer as "libIUP.dll".

Windows XP (2k and 9x are similiar to this):
http://www.wikihow.com/Disable-Hidden-F ... Windows-XP

Vista and 7:
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/disable_hi ... types.html

Galeon · Post by **Galeon** » Jul 30, 2009 12:54

I have gcc 3.4.5 in my WinXPSP2, I tried this:
reimp htmlhelp.lib
But I got a file "init.obj".
htmlhelp.lib is from HTML Help Workshop
I think, but not sure, is that according to Microsoft, there is something special inside it because it loads the library automatically.

Amundo · Post by **Amundo** » Jul 31, 2009 1:53

Thanks AGS, this is a much better explanation than my attempt :(

http://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewtopi ... highlight=