Why are there so many DLL's?

[WMD]

I did a search for *.dll on my c:/winnt directory.

1,931 files.  WTF?  Why does Windows keep so MANY of these damn things?  Also there were 481 in the "Common Files" directory.

Is this just classic MS bloatware?

[anphanax]

A lot of them are Microsoft's, but also a lot of them are put there by other software.

A DLL is basically a compiled library of subroutines, and usually the functions contained in them are refered to as WinAPI. There are a lot of them (probably too many :\) because they are for the most part specialized, although somewhat repetitive and can be space wasters. (they can also be used for icon libraries and other similar things, since they they can hold resources, not that PE/NE Win32/Win16 EXEs can't)

IE (Taken From XP Pro Install):
SHELL32.DLL.......Common Shell API
COMDLG32.DLL......"Common Dialog (save, load, color selection, font selection, printer dialogs, etc)"
GDI32.DLL.........Graphics\Device Interaction
KERNEL32.DLL......OS Core\Base
USER32.DLL........Controls\Messaging\Interface
ADVAPI32.DLL......Registry I\O
UXTHEME.DLL.......XP Skinning
SHDOCVW.DLL.......Shell Document\Control
SHLWAPI.DLL.......Shell Light-Weight Utility Library
MSVCRT.DLL........Bunch of stuff for MSVC++ Runtime
NTDLL.DLL.........NT Layer (Used by Kernel32, see portable executable imports table)
BROWSEUI.DLL......Shell Browser UI
WSOCK32.DLL.......Windows Socket API
MSVBVM60.DLL......Visual Basic 6.0 Runtime
OLEAUT32.DLL......OLE 3.5 For NT/95 Automation
OLE32.DLL.........Microsoft OLE For Windows
OLEDLG.DLL........OLE 2.0 User Interface Support
MORICONS.DLL......WinNT\95 Setup Icon Resources Library (Where the QBASIC icon, and other old ms-dos icons live        )
etc..

Edit: Various grammer fixes. Original post didn't make much sense, sorry.

[ December 09, 2003: Message edited by: anphanax ]

[skyman8081]

just to play a bit of devils advocate there are 10801 files that come up in a search for *.*o(.o and .so) in /usr on my gentoo install (granted it is a bit unfair, but devils advocate here, ok) so I think that you are being overly broad on this by just looking in C:\winnt, however yes windows is bloated. NT is a good start because of the new core.  BUT there is still old crap for win9x/win16 apps to still run (hopefully)

[Refalm]

I think that there's a shortage of dll's. Microsoft should restore all dll's that weren't in Windows XP, but where in Windows ME, NT, 98, 95, 2000...

[hm_murdock]

why are there so many DLL's what?

remember...

Ohhhhhh if it's plural it's just "D-L-L-s" but if it's a posessive it's "D-L-L-apostrophe-s"

scalawag

and another question... WHY IN THE NAME OF FUCK DO YOU CARE?!?! Jesus, sometimes I think you guys LOOK for stupid things to whine about.

HEY! THE "X" GRAPHIC IN THE CLOSE BOX IS 3 PIXELS WIDE, WHILE THE LITTLE BAR IN THE MINIMIZE BOX AND THE SQUARE IN THE ZOOM BOX ARE 2 PIXELS WIDE!! WINDOWS SUCKS!

I'm gonna go search for random filetypes on a computer. If there's a lot of them, then I'm going to come whine about it. HOW'S THAT?

[ December 10, 2003: Message edited by: evil fucking bastard jimmy james ]

[Fett101]

God damn there's a lot of mp3's. What they fuck is MS doing taking up 9gb's of space for these damned things.

[psyjax]

Well, a valid complaint can be made about DLL's.

It's windows' reliance on such an amount of obscurly named, and scattered DLL files. One DLL goes missing and your whole system may go down without hope of rescue.

There are much more elegant solutions, like the old Mac OS System file  

I love that thing. You fuck it up, drag the one from the cd and youve fixed it.

[jtpenrod]

quote:
I did a search for *.dll on my c:/winnt directory.

1,931 files. WTF? Why does Windows keep so MANY of these damn things? Also there were 481 in the "Common Files" directory.

Because it's a half-fast attempt to implement *NIX shared libraries. With Linux, you always know where to find them: /usr/lib or /usr/local/lib. (You can find the paths to all shared libraries in /etc/ld.co.conf). Unlike Win-d'ohs, where DLLs can be found just about anywhere. Furthermore, third-party apps frequently install these with no apparant rhyme or reason. It makes things especially difficult to uninstall, since the program installer may not keep track of them, and stray DLLs are a cause of instability. Lastly, there is no protection since installing one new app can overwrite a new DLL with an older version, which can break lots of other apps. That's why they call it "DLL Hell"
______________________________________
Live Free or Die: Linux

If software can be free, why can't dolphins?

[hm_murdock]

a whole lot CAN be said against .dll files

a whole lot more can be said against

/lib/*
/usr/lib/*
/opt/lib/*
/usr/X11R6/lib/*

and the billions of shitty little files in there that do something like let emacs use the CTRL key, or some crap like that

why don't we just throw it all away and use Mac OS 9.2.2?

THE WORLD WOULD BE BETTER FOR IT!

ehh... it'd be even better if we all used NeXTStep

[flap]

Yeah, and why do all the unix source files have all these thousands of lines of complicated code? They could probably be thrown away and just replaced with a nice, simple photo of a pony.

[ December 11, 2003: Message edited by: flap ]

[WMD]

quote:Originally posted by evil fucking bastard jimmy james:
HEY! THE "X" GRAPHIC IN THE CLOSE BOX IS 3 PIXELS WIDE, WHILE THE LITTLE BAR IN THE MINIMIZE BOX AND THE SQUARE IN THE ZOOM BOX ARE 2 PIXELS WIDE!! WINDOWS SUCKS!

WTF?  

 

quote:I'm gonna go search for random filetypes on a computer. If there's a lot of them, then I'm going to come whine about it. HOW'S THAT?

Erm...random?  DLLs are important in Windows.

 

quote:a whole lot more can be said against

/lib/*
/usr/lib/*
/opt/lib/*
/usr/X11R6/lib/*

*checks Linux computer*
/lib: 1,351 files, 17MB.
/usr/lib: 14,389 files, 470MB.
/opt/lib: don't have that directory.
/usr/X11R6/lib: 8,660 files, 105MB.

 :eek:

Ah well.  At least they're all in one place.  

[hm_murdock]

that's 24,400 files, dicklick.

last time I checked 24,400 > 1,931

as for "obscure names" let's look at some of  this bullshit

libicucore.dylib                libtinfo.dylib
libinfo.dylib                   libxml2.2.dylib
libiodbc.2.1.6.dylib            libxml2.dylib
libiodbc.2.dylib                libz.1.1.3.dylib
libiodbc.dylib                  libz.1.dylib
libiodbcinst.2.1.6.dylib        libz.dylib
libiodbcinst.2.dylib            pam
libiodbcinst.dylib              php
libipsec.A.dylib                pkgconfig
libipsec.dylib                  ruby
libk5crypto.dylib               sa
libkrb4.dylib                   sasl2
libkrb5.dylib                   system
libkrb524.dylib                 tclConfig.sh
libkvm.dylib                    xml2Conf.sh
liblber.dylib                   zsh
libldap.dylib

that's some of the files that exist in /private/usr/bin in Mac OS X 10.3.1 (on Darwin 7.0, MACH kernel, FreeBSD 5 Subsystem)

this patchwork of shit is what keeps the UNIX parts of OS X on its feet.

the high-level stuff, fortunately rides atop this and doesn't have to deal with it.

anyway, I think you might want to check out your findings there, bub

until then, fuck off

[enjoijeff]

quote:HEY! THE "X" GRAPHIC IN THE CLOSE BOX IS 3 PIXELS WIDE, WHILE THE LITTLE BAR IN THE MINIMIZE BOX AND THE SQUARE IN THE ZOOM BOX ARE 2 PIXELS WIDE!! WINDOWS SUCKS!

Is that true? Wow, windows does suck. I mean wow.   :cool:

[solarismka]

The thing with dlls is, its what M$ uses on top of it registry.

The registry is the foundation of windows while as the DLL file is the book that it gets the information to build the appropreate software on top of that foundation.

Not only does it get information for that software but it also checks the version of dlls.

win 95 is not compatible with 98 with ME/XP 2k well you get the idea.

And exuse jimmy there.  we have problems with trolls on this board.

[hm_murdock]

what's that? I couldn't hear your underbreath mutterings

HUMAN DETRITUS

[ December 13, 2003: Message edited by: evil fucking bastard jimmy james ]