May 2nd, 2014

If a lot of settings are ignored when set in a DLL, why bother even letting you set them on a DLL?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

There are many settings that are ignored when set in a DLL. /LARGE­ADDRESS­AWARE. Size­Of­Stack­Reserve and Size­Of­Stack­Commit. There are plenty of others. Commenter 640k asks why these settings even exist for DLLs if they has no effect. Because they are settings for PE modules in general. If there were separate file formats for EXEs and DLLs, then there would have to be two different module loaders, one for EXEs and one for DLLs. This creates extra work for no particular benefit aside from satisfying some anal-retentive compulsion that nothing be wasted. As far as I can tell, all operating systems use a common file format for both executables and libraries.

If it really bothers you, you can consider this flags as Reserved for future use when applied to DLLs.

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Old New Thing
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Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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