Q:
Is dlopen available on all versions of Mac OS X?
A: Prior to version 10.3, dlopen was only available for Mac OS X as a third party library called dlcompat.
In order to better support the compilation of various software projects on Mac OS X, Apple rolled dlcompat into the operating system in Mac OS X 10.3. Then for Mac OS X 10.4, Apple rewrote dlopen and integrated it into the dyld project. Consequently, dlopen, dlclose, dlsym, and dlerror are all implemented using dyld calls.
Software written using a higher level framework in most cases should use the dynamic linking facilities available at that level. Core Foundation provides two mechanisms for dynamically linking to libraries and plug-ins: CFBundle and, layered on top of that, CFPlugIn. Cocoa programmers will probably want to use NSBundle.
Detailed information about using dynamic libraries on Mac OS X can be found in the ADC document "Introduction to Dynamic Library Programming Topics".
Document Revision History
| Date |
Notes |
| 2008-08-19 |
Fixed broken links. |
| 2006-05-11 |
Moved to Darwin>Porting category. |
| 2005-12-02 |
Changed title and content to reflect dlopen's inclusion in Panther and beyond. |
| 2002-08-19 |
Describes how to dynamically link to libraries and plug-ins, typically done with dlopen. |
Posted: 2008-08-19
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