Dynamic library naming issues

Suppose your application uses a dynamic library, say example.dll. Recall that BOINC files are immutable. If you use the physical name example.dll there will be a problem if either

• You support multiple platforms (say, Win32 and Win64), and there are different versions of example.dll for each platform.
• You need to update to new versions of the library.

The easiest solution is:

• Give the libraries physical names that encode the platform and version number, e.g. example_win32_1_17.dll and example_win64_1_17.dll.
• Use example.dll as the logical name. To do this, use something like the following in your version description file:

  ...
    <file>
      <physical_name>example_win32_1_17.dll</physical_name>
      <logical_name>example.dll</logical_name>
      <copy_file/>
  ...
  

The copy_file flag tells the BOINC to copy the library to the application's runtime directory.

Avoiding name conflicts

The search order for libraries is:

1. The project directory
2. The slot directory
3. other directories

Hence if you use example.dll as a physical name in one app version, other app versions will use that library even if they use the above scheme.

To avoid this problem, use logical names that don't conflict with physical names.

.NET applications

.NET does not use the current directory as a search path for dependencies.

Our workaround is to install a handler for the AssemblyResolve? event and use the current directory (slot) to load the dependencies: