Imperfect C++ Practical Solutions for Real-Life Programming

Chapter 7. ABI

Sharing Code

Suppose that you've implemented a library of some useful classes, and want to make it available for other programmers to use. Furthermore, let's say that some of these other programmers are using different operating systems and/or different compilers than the one used to develop the software. How do you do it?

Well, the most obvious solution, although not necessarily the most desirable, is to simply let them have all the source code, and build it themselves. In theory, that should work fine, since all the compilers should be able to deal with your C++ code, right? Unfortunately, as you have probably already experienced, or at least gleaned from this book, the complexity of C++ is such that compilers have their own dialectical ...