Firefox plugin dll dependency on the filename

Question

Hello all, my current work tasking requires creating a firefox plugin. I've done this relatively easily on Linux but porting to windows has exposed a peculiar problem. To do the port, I refactored the basic windows example given in the mozilla source tree. I did this operation slowly and methodically, testing as I went. Aside from the occasional OS dependent glitch everything seemed to be going fine until I finally changed the output name of the plugin dll. So, instead of creating a dll called npbasic.dll, the filename was fubar.dll. This immediately caused the plugin to stop working: it did not get picked up in Firefox about:plugins. Changing the filename back to npbasic.dll allowed the firefox plugin tab to "see" the plugin again.

Is anyone aware of an aspect of dll linking/functionality which could be causing this observed dependency?, any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Well, I've done some more research and it's clear that my approach of painstakingly refactoring the example plugin was flawed, the best strategy is to use something like firebreath, as described here : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/62977/how-to-write-a-c-firefox-3-plugin-not-extension-on-windows