Excel does not recognise my xll file

Question

I created my first xll file with codeblocks & mingw, following this guide http://support.microsoft.com/kb/178474/en-us

The problem is that the dll file, renamed as xll file, is not recognised by excel.

I do not understand the meaning of point 10 of the guide i linked, thus that might be my problem. I thought that def files were an output of the compiler. Why is the guide suggesting that they are an input?

If they are an input, how can I set codeblocks to take the def file as an input?

Thank you.

[EDIT] Issue solved: In case someone incur in the same problem, the issue was definitely the naming convention of the exported functions. By using Def file properly, the issue is solved.

Answer 1

So, the compiler can produce a .def file for a .dll, but (I'm guessing) the reason this is not used here is that you want to have control as to what the names and placement of the symbols are - in particular, since the .dll uses __stdcall, not _cdecl type calling convention.

Here's a page that describes some of the particularities with gcc/mingw and DLL's, including how to use your own .def file:

http://www.mingw.org/wiki/MSVC_and_MinGW_DLLs

In particular, the dlltool:

dlltool -U -d testdll.def -l libtestdll.a

Answer 2

If you have your heart set on codeblocks & mingw, then you won't find https://xll.codeplex.com useful. It requires Microsoft's free version of Visual Studio.

If you need to build an xll to solve a problem, it might help you with that.