RE: extern "C" From command line

["Seyran Avanesyan" <seyran dot avanesyan at tanner dot com>]

Brian Dessent wrote:

> Please don't hijack threads; start a new thread.  

Thanks for correcting me. 

> The mangling is there for a reason.  If you exported a function with
> C++
> linkage but without its name mangled then it's very likely that you
> could call it from a compiler with a different C++ ABI, such as MSVC,
> and that would fail.  Mangling prevents this, because it requires that
> to call the function you have a compiler with compatible ABI.

The functions are going to be exported from a Dll, which is going to be
done using MinGW. Is that still requires that client of that Dll be
compiled with MinGW? 

> If your complaint is simply that you don't want to put mangled names
in
> the .def file, then I must ask: why use a .def file at all?  It's
> usually not needed.  The GNU linker has auto-export enabled by default
> which causes all symbols to be exported if __declspec(dllexport) is
not
> used anywhere.  And if __declspec(dllexport) is used, then the source
> itself already controls what functions to be exported so the .def file
> is extraneous.

gcc -x c++ source.cpp -o source.o
gcc -shared -o source.dll my_source.o source.o

I'm exporting just two functions from "my_source.o" (which I have access
to, and they have __declspec(dllexport) and extern "C").
There are many other global functions in "my_source.o" which is used
from "source.o", but not need to be exported from the resulting Dll.

I needed .def file to export all global functions from "source.o" to not
use -export-all feature (because it will export all globals from both
modules regardless of __declspecs.)
And I'm getting this .def file by using dlltool (MinGW component.)

The problem is I need to MinGW compile a Dll as C++ not as C, and call
exported functions from MSVC compiled application. 


Thanks,

Seyran