[I don't think it's off-topic at all] Linking speed for C++

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Henderson <rth@redhat.com> writes:

Richard> Recently some symbol visibility flags were added to ELF.  It
Richard> would be possible to change the compiler such that
Richard>   class __attribute__((visibility(protected))) Foo
Richard>   {
Richard>   ...
Richard>   };

When would we not want to do this?

In Java there are no attributes.  I'm wondering if it would make sense
to just have the compiler always do this.  I don't see a big value in
being able to override methods and the like from another shared
library.

Tom