When calling load_single_library(), if the 3rd parameter, which is the name of the export factory function, is incorrect, load_single_library() will silently fail and return as if nothing went wrong. However, since the name of that function was mistyped (in my case), I had to debug into the boost.extensions library to figure out the actual source of the problem. I think this should have thrown an exception. For example, I called the function like below: factory_map fm; load_single_library( fm, "my_library.dll", "my_export_method_typo" ); And my function, as defined in the DLL source, is as follows: extern "C" void BOOST_EXTENSION_EXPORT_DECL my_export_method( boost::extensions::factory_map& fm ) { } As you can see, the string (in the first code example) is clearly mistyped/misnamed. This results in silent failure. Opinions on this would be useful.