I've recently been using GtkD with the D programming language to create native applications. I've downloaded all the necessary files and got everything running so i can now compile and produce sample apps.
My question is that in some of the guides it tells you to compile GtkD on the platform you are using but what is the point? Once compiled you end up with a single lib file on Windows (GtkD.lib) and three lib files on Linux (ending in *.a). What are these files for and how are they used? Like i said everything seems to be working without doing anything with these files.
I'm guessing you can statically link these? but what's that for? To avoid compiling the GtkD source each time? I did actually try that using the pragma('lib', 'GtkD.lib')
statement but it didn't seem to do anything.
Can anyone shine any light on this or explain why these files are needed?