Programming :: Use Libxml2 On MinGW - XmlFree Crashes

libxml2 works fine on Linux machines. On Windows, the distribution at [URL] is built for the Microsoft C compiler/linker. The tools pexport and dlltool supplied with MinGW work fine to enable linking to these libraries EXCEPT for static data within the DLL. libxml2 is written so that calls to xmlFree, xmlMalloc and xmlRealloc dispatch through static variables in the DLL - the actual function has another name. BUT, the link library that dlltool builds has its own .globl variable that never gets initialized, and calls to xmlFree(whoever) wind up at location 0.

SOLUTION: AFTER an initial call to xmlParseFile() or some other xml function that initializes the DLL's variables, add the line:

if(!xmlFree) xmlMemGet(&xmlFree,&xmlMalloc,&xmlRealloc,NULL) This will initialize the application's static pointers to the dll's routines. (The NULL pointer would return the address of xmlStrdup, but it's a function already, not a variable <???> so it works anyway).This solution is portable - if you run on a Linux machine where the pointers are properly initialized already, it won't hurt anything.