README.md

ImpLib SDK

ImpLib SDK combines free programming tools for authoring custom import libraries Windows DLL. The SDK supports advanced features, like cdecl2stdcall conversion, importing by ordinal, removing original thunk, accessing internal undocumented functions. There are many non-standard use cases, like interfacing a DLL with cdecl calling convention from Visual Basic 6, prototyping a set of DLL functions for PureBasic, mangling the symbolic aliases for an existing object file in Visual C / MASM32 / NASM and so on. ImpLib SDK provides a set of tools to solve this kind of problems. It is not necessary to know the internal structure of an Import Library file to use these tools.

The ImpLib SDK is also useful to overcome any legal restrictions when redistributing the import libraries for certain DLL files, like the Microsoft® C++ runtime. The import libraries for the CRT or STL are part of the Windows SDK. Even though the SDK is available for free, redistributing these files is not allowed according to the current license agreements. An alternative is to generate these import libraries using the ImpLib SDK, as it doesn't restrict redistribution.

The ImpLib SDK Guide provides a more detailed description and a set of tutorials.

The ImpLib SDK is free even for commercial use and redistribution of any kind, as long as all copyrights are preserved. The whole package is provided "AS IS". Check the license file included in the current release for additional info.

Installation and Usage

Unpack the ImpLib SDK release into any directory. Then launch the build_libs.bat. This batch file builds or rebuilds all the sample import libraries. The building process may take several minutes to complete due to the large size of the sample libraries.

The output libraries are stored into the lib subdirectory. Two import libraries are created for each input file: a regular import library including original thunk and a stripped version without original thunk. The latter is stored into lib\stripped.

If you add new import library definitions or modify the sample files, just rerun build_libs.bat. Only new or moified files will be recompiled.