Re: loading Lua DLLs from an archive file?

["Jerome Vuarand" <jerome.vuarand@...>]

2008/12/8 Eike Decker <eike@cube3d.de>:
> I want to bundle multiple Lua libraries in a single file (i.e. a ZIP file).
> Loading Lua files is not the problem but loading DLLs seems to be difficult...
> I tried looking how to load DLLs from memory or how to create a VFS but this
> seems to go nowhere.
> There exist applications (http://www.molebox.com/) that can include DLLs into a
> single exe and it is said that these applications load the DLLs from memory and
> not from the file system - so there seems to exist a solution... but I haven't
> been able to find it till now, or the solution must be quite complex.
> The alternative would be to leave the DLLs out and distribute the DLLs alongside
> with the exe - but I would prefer a solution to include all libraries into a
> single archive - without extracting these dlls to a temporary file.
> Of course I could also link the exe statically with the libraries, but I would
> prefer not to do this and could instead simply wrap the DLLs as they come...
>
> Probably not worth the extra work for the minor advantage of having a purely
> psychologically cleaner looking distribution, yet I am interested if and how
> this could be done - otherwise I'll simply put these DLLs alongside with the
> files. Any pointers would be welcome.

If the DLL you want to package are Lua binary modules, you can also
statically link them in your executable, and with the help of the
preload searcher it will be transparent to your application and other
Lua modules (ie. you will still load them through require).