win32_before_main update to holding the symbol with linker include option replacing dllexport

win32_before_main/DETAILS.txt

@@ -23,8 +23,11 @@ anything.
 
 However, in this example I show how we can still make it work. We have to
 make sure the linker won't eliminate the global variable that we are trying to
-place into the ".CRT$XCU" section. I achieve this by marking it as an export
-symbol. Export symbols can't be eliminated even if they aren't used locally.
+place into the ".CRT$XCU" section. We can tell the linker to keep a symbol with
+/include:<symbol-name> and we can add this command to the linker via a pragma
+comment:
+
+__pragma(comment(linker,"/include:<symbol-name>"))
 
 From what I've seen in testing, this works as desired, even with the /GL option.
 

win32_before_main/win32_before_main.c

@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ static void run_before_main_func(void);
 
 // set the before-main execution function pointer
 __declspec(allocate(".CRT$XCU"))
-__declspec(dllexport)
+__pragma(comment(linker,"/include:run_before_main_ptr"))
 void (*run_before_main_ptr)(void) = run_before_main_func;
 
 // define the "before main" function
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ int main(){
 
 #define BEFORE_MAIN(n) static void n(void);    \
 __declspec(allocate(".CRT$XCU"))              \
-__declspec(dllexport)                      \
+__pragma(comment(linker,"/include:" #n "__")) \
 void (*n##__)(void) = n;                      \
 static void n(void)
 

xlist/base.h

@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@
 
 #define BEFORE_MAIN(n) static void n(void);    \
 __declspec(allocate(".CRT$XCU"))              \
-__declspec(dllexport)                       \
+__pragma(comment(linker,"/include:" #n "__")) \
 void (*n##__)(void) = n;                      \
 static void n(void)