How exactly does linking in C# work?

Posted by akosch on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by akosch
Published on 2010-06-18T08:39:43Z Indexed on 2010/06/18 8:43 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 416

Filed under:

c#

|

linking

|

gpl

|

dynamic-linking

|

license

I want to use a GPL'd library in my C# application, but not necessarily release my own code under the GPL. If I understand correctly linking against a GPL'd library using dynamic linking and not distributing the library in question means I can license my own app in any way I want (the users of my software would then be required to install the library themselves). Please correct me if I'm wrong.

My question is: how can I link against a DLL this way in C#? Do I only need to use C#'s using directive and add the DLL as a reference to the compiler? Is the distribution of the resulting bytecode legal?

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about c#

.NET WebRequest.PreAuthenticate not quite what it sounds like

as seen on West-Wind - Search for 'West-Wind'
I’ve run into the problem a few times now: How to pre-authenticate .NET WebRequest calls doing an HTTP call to the server – essentially send authentication credentials on the very first request instead of waiting for a server challenge first? At first glance this sound like it should be easy:… >>> More
HttpWebRequest and Ignoring SSL Certificate Errors

as seen on West-Wind - Search for 'West-Wind'
Man I can't believe this. I'm still mucking around with OFX servers and it drives me absolutely crazy how some these servers are just so unbelievably misconfigured. I've recently hit three different 3 major brokerages which fail HTTP validation with bad or corrupt certificates at least according to… >>> More
The dynamic Type in C# Simplifies COM Member Access from Visual FoxPro

as seen on West-Wind - Search for 'West-Wind'
I’ve written quite a bit about Visual FoxPro interoperating with .NET in the past both for ASP.NET interacting with Visual FoxPro COM objects as well as Visual FoxPro calling into .NET code via COM Interop. COM Interop with Visual FoxPro has a number of problems but one of them at least got a lot… >>> More
Dynamic Type to do away with Reflection

as seen on West-Wind - Search for 'West-Wind'
The dynamic type in C# 4.0 is a welcome addition to the language. One thing I’ve been doing a lot with it is to remove explicit Reflection code that’s often necessary when you ‘dynamically’ need to walk and object hierarchy. In the past I’ve had a number of ReflectionUtils that used string based expressions… >>> More
Finding a Relative Path in .NET

as seen on West-Wind - Search for 'West-Wind'
Here’s a nice and simple path utility that I’ve needed in a number of applications: I need to find a relative path based on a base path. So if I’m working in a folder called c:\temp\templates\ and I want to find a relative path for c:\temp\templates\subdir\test.txt I want to receive back subdir\test… >>> More

Related posts about linking

Linking Secrets - Part I - Linking Structure

as seen on Ezine Articles - Search for 'Ezine Articles'
Google classes a link as a 'vote' for your website, as most people only link to a site if they are talking about it or referring to it as a good resource. This means the almighty link has become a huge factor in how well you rank in the search engines. >>> More
dynamic linking:change of the linking path.

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Normally it happens that when ever the path of the library that has to be linked dynamically is defined in LD_LIBRARY_PATH or it it will be mentioned with -L flag while creating the binary. In actual scenario if ,lets say the binary has been built and deployed at the client place. Now if there… >>> More
C++ linking error when linking postgresql

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
When compiling my code I run into an issue as follows: io.cpp:21: undefined reference to `PQconnectdb' as well as all other instances of missing postgres function calls occurring in my code. Obviously this is a linking problem, I'm just not sure what the link issue is. I'm compiling with the… >>> More
jQuery Templates and Data Linking (and Microsoft contributing to jQuery)

as seen on ASP.net Weblogs - Search for 'ASP.net Weblogs'
The jQuery library has a passionate community of developers, and it is now the most widely used JavaScript library on the web today. Two years ago I announced that Microsoft would begin offering product support for jQuery, and that we’d be including it in new versions of Visual Studio going forward… >>> More
Boost.Thread Linking - boost_thread vs. boost_thread-mt

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
It's not clear to me what linking options exist for the Boost.Thread 1.34.1 library. I'm on Ubuntu 8.04 and I've found that using eitherr boost_thread or boost_thread-mt during linking both compile and run, but I don't see any documentation on these or any other linking options in above link. What… >>> More