Using Windows DLL from Linux

Question

We need to interface to 3rd party app, but company behind the app doesn\'t disclose message protocol and provides only Windows DLL to interface to.

Our application i

Answer 1

Sometimes it is better to pick a small vendor over a large vendor because the size of your business will give you more weight for them. We have certainly found this with AV engine vendors.

If you are sufficiently important to them, they should provide either a documented, supported protocol, a Linux build of the library, or the source code to the library.

Otherwise you'll have to run a Windows box in the loop using RPC as others have noted, which is likely to be very inconvenient, especially if the whole of the rest of your infrastructure runs Linux.

Will the vendor support the use of their library within a Windows VM? If performance is not critical, you might be able to do that.