4. Frequently Asked Questions

The problem is, as usual, Windows. There is no dlfcn.h header on Windows,and there is no dlopen API. There is a similar API around the LoadLibrary function, and most of what is written here applies to it, too. Alternatively, you can use libltdl (included in libtool) to "emulate" dlopen on a variety of platforms.

You should also read section 4, "Dynamically Loaded (DL) Libraries" , of the Program Library HOWTO for more techniques to load libraries and create classes independently of your platform.

I don't know of any, and I don't think there'll ever be one supporting all of dlopen 's options.

There are alternatives though: libtltdl (a part of libtool), which wraps a variety of different dynamic loading APIs, among others dlopen and LoadLibrary . Another one is the Dynamic Module Loading functionality of GLib . You can use one of these to ensure better possible cross-platform compatibility. I've never used any of them, so I can't tell you how stable they are and whether they really work.