Re: [Mingw-users] MSVC import library confusion

[Brian D. <br...@de...>]

Chr...@in... wrote:

> Maybe this is the wrong mailing list for this question: is there a way
> to 'convince' Visual Studio to generate interoperable DLLs which than
> can be accessed by g++? Some compiler flags or some specific export
> statements. I have access to the DLL sources and could therefore do some
> slight modifications if it were of any use.

This is just one of the inherent properties of C++.  The language leaves
so much for the compiler to do "behind the scenes" that there is a
tremendous amount of implementation-specific behavior.  The reason that
symbol mangling was invented (AFAIK) was precisely so that each compiler
could differentiate itself from other compilers with different ABIs, so
that there was no chance that two implementations' objects could ever be
accidently linked.

And, it's not just VC++ and g++ that have different ABIs, it's even
different versions of the same compiler.  For example, the gcc ABI
changed between 2.95 and 3.0, and again with 3.3, and again with 4.x. 
So if you have a C++ library compiled with g++ 3.2 you can't use any
other version of g++ to write code that uses/links with this lib.  This
is one of those things about C++ you can't change.

Brian