[Python-Dev] Should Python compile as C++? (original) (raw)

Jack Jansen jack@oratrix.com
Tue, 5 Feb 2002 16:37:06 +0100

On Tuesday, February 5, 2002, at 01:31 , Tim Peters wrote:

... MSVC has had the same problem for years. What's strange is that in some cases, MSVC does seem to get it right where in others it fails with an error -- probably a DLL vs. EXE thing. MS C can't handle cross-DLL references in initializers, because they're truly not "constant" in the way C requires (but C doesn't say anything about DLLs!).

I've always understood that the problem here was that Microsoft's object file format allows for patching up references in the text segment but not in the data segment. And C++ doesn't have the problem, because it can do initializers in code anyway, so it doesn't need a data segment reference to the symbol from the DLL.

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