Subject: Re: [boost] [all] Request for out of the box visibility support
From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2018-08-18 15:19:06
On 8/18/18 6:58 AM, Edward Diener via Boost wrote:
>
> I do not see any difference, vis-a-vis the visibility problem discussed,
> between dynamically loaded shared libraries or statically loaded shared
> libraries.
visibility isn't really an issue with static libraries. visibility
decreases the number of externally visible symbols. In linking a static
library this might decrease linking times - but I haven't noticed it and
I never received complaints about it. I think that the BOOST visibility
macros are defined to nothing for static builds.
But for shared libraries it's a whole 'nuther issue. The huge number of
symbols in libraries can make the shared libraries much, much larger and
slow down dynamic linking time considerably. This is why this is a
worthy project.
From personal experience in implementing this for the serialization
library (admittedly a more complex example), anyone who embarks upon
this will be disappointed at the amount of time it ends up consuming.
Robert Ramey