Creating a portable library to run on both linux and windows

Question

gcc (GCC) 4.7.2

Hello,

I am creating a shared library that will compile on linux and a dll that will compile on windows using the same sour

Answer 1

Due to the concept of polymorphism which is specific to c++ language, All the functions defined in c++ are mangled. i.e., to create unique names for each overridden function, the "compiler" decorates the function names.

Since name mangling is handled by "compiler" and there is no specification to strictly define the name mangling rules, each compiler decorates the names in different ways. Simply put, gcc and msvc compilers create different function signatures for the same code. you can read further about name mangling at the wiki article here.

Your module.h file simply tells the compiler to use c style name mangling or no mangling at all. due to this directive, the library that is compiled by gcc can be used to link to a binary that is written in visual studio. This will help you to distribute the binaries of your library instead of source code.

On the other hand, if you do not use the EXTERN_C directive, the library and the project that links to the library should be compiled using same compiler. for example, you have to use gcc for linux compilation and msvc for windows compilation for both the library and the project linking to that library.