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I am new to the Zig language and have a question about creating a 32-bit Windows DLL.
I am using zig-windows-x86_64-0.11.0-dev.2612+56d800ff7.zip.

I have created a project using zig init-lib, but the generated build.zig seemed to be for a static library, so I ignored it.

To create a release build without debug information, I used the following command:

zig build-lib -O ReleaseFast -fstrip -target x86-windows-gnu -dynamic src/main.zig

However, this command produced several undefined symbol errors, such as:

error: lld-link: <root>: undefined symbol: _DllMainCRTStartup@12
error: lld-link: <root>: undefined symbol: add
error: lld-link: <root>: undefined symbol: _tls_index
error: lld-link: <root>: undefined symbol: _tls_start
error: lld-link: <root>: undefined symbol: _tls_end
error: lld-link: <root>: undefined symbol: __xl_a
error: lld-link: <root>: undefined symbol: __xl_z
error: lld-link: <root>: undefined symbol: _tls_used

Adding -lc to the options allowed the compilation to succeed, but I don't think this is the correct solution since Zig doesn't depend on the C runtime.
I want to know if there's a way to compile without the C runtime.

Additionally, inspecting the generated main.dll with dumpbin /EXPORTS shows that _DllMainCRTStartup@12 is exported:

    ordinal hint RVA      name

          1    0 00001000 _DllMainCRTStartup@12 = __DllMainCRTStartup@12
          2    1 00001010 add = _add

I believe it is unnecessary as it's the DLL entry point and shouldn't be used by GetProcAddress.
Please tell me if there is a reason why this is being exported, or if there is a way to prevent it from being exported.

I discovered that commenting out the @export in lib/std/start.zig achieved the desired behavior, but obviously this is not a smart.
I'm looking for the most appropriate solution.

noob
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1 Answers1

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Inside your build.zig for zig-lib change "addStaticLibrary" to "addSharedLibrary". Then run "zig build" to rebuild the library and now you will have a zig-lib.dll in .\zig-out\lib directory.

Laters, SLDR

Stephen L. De Rudder
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  • I edited the `build.zig` as you said and built with the `zig build -Dtarget=x86-windows-gnu -Doptimize=ReleaseFast`, but I got the same error. After researching, this seems to be an [open issue](https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/11817). – noob Apr 18 '23 at 17:42