On Windows when
automatic-init
was true the initialization finishes before the Windows function
LoadLibrary
returns, and if LispWorks fails for some reason then the call to
LoadLibrary
fails too.
On other platforms when
automatic-init
was true, during the automatic initialization
dlopen
just causes the initialization to start and returns immediately. The initialization will finish sometime later. The LispWorks function LispWorksState can be used to check whether it finished initializing.
Automatic initialization is useful when the dynamic library is something like a server that does not communicate by function calls. On Windows it also allows
LoadLibrary
to succeed or fail according to whether the LispWorks dynamic library initialized successfully or not.