[cairo] Re: Munging header files for export (and other) attributes

[Carl Worth]

On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 12:54:31 -0400, John Ellson wrote:
> References for the ".defs files" solution please?

We have a Makefile rule for creating a cairo.def file listing all
symbols that should be exported.

This seems like a valid approach to me, since as far as I understand,
most every platform has some mechanism for exporting only the symbols
listed in a file. (We could even use a similar approach with gcc,
though our current scheme to instead explicitly mark non-exported
symbols during compilation does have some performance benefits).

I was working on the header-munging approach since some people I've
talked to who care a lot about seeing this problem solved don't see
the .def file approach as adequate. I think the concern was that the
format of the symbol-listing file differs slightly from one platform
to the next, but I don't know if there were other concerns.

I'd be glad to have either the header-munging or symbol-listing-file
approach in place. I think the fragility and quirks of either approach
could be resolved adequately.

My point is just that the question of symbol exporting should be
resolved at build time and has no business leaking out into an
installed header file.

-Carl
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/cairo/attachments/20050831/52ab22ca/attachment.pgp