MetaTrader 4 framework DLL extension

This project is part of the MetaTrader 4 development framework.

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Build environment

For backward compatibility with Windows XP the DDL is built with Visual Studio 2008 (an Express version was not tested). It may be possible to setup a current version of Visual Studio to support Windows XP (or to skip Windows XP support at all).

Shared header files

The header files in {expander-root}/header/shared should be shared with the MetaTrader 4 MQL framework to make sure that definitions in both projects match. It can be accomplished by symlinking the files from {rosasurfer/mt4-mql}/mql4/include/shared to {expander-root}/header/shared. The DLL can be build with and without shared headers. If you get the error Cannot open include file: 'shared/defines.h': No such file or directory symlink the shared files or run the build tool at least once to setup building without shared headers.

Pre/Post-build events

If the Visual Studio build tool can't find the header files in {expander-root}/header/shared the pre-build event restores backups from {expander-root}/header/shared/bak.

After a successfull build the post-build event creates new backups of the currently used files. If a (symlinked) directory {expander-root}/bin/mql4-libraries is found the resulting DLL is copied into that directory.

:: Pre-build event
if not exist "$(ProjectDir)header\shared\defines.h" (
   echo Shared header "$(ProjectDir)header\shared\defines.h" missing, using backup...
   copy "$(ProjectDir)header\shared\bak\defines.h" "$(ProjectDir)header\shared\"
)
if not exist "$(ProjectDir)header\shared\errors.h" (
   echo Shared header "$(ProjectDir)header\shared\errors.h" missing, using backup...
   copy "$(ProjectDir)header\shared\bak\errors.h" "$(ProjectDir)header\shared\"
)

:: Post-build event
echo Backing up shared header files...
copy "$(ProjectDir)header\shared\*.h" "$(ProjectDir)header\shared\bak\"

if exist "$(ProjectDir)bin\mql4-libraries\" (
   echo Copying DLL to MetaTrader MQL libraries...
   copy "$(TargetPath)" "$(ProjectDir)bin\mql4-libraries\rsfMT4Expander.$(ConfigurationName)$(TargetExt)"
)

Managing symlinks and junctions on Windows

A comfortable way to manage Windows reparse points is the free Link Shell Extension by Hermann Schinagl. To activate Git support for symbolic links on Windows add the config option core.symlinks = true to your Git configuration:

$ git config --global core.symlinks true