Re: How protect source code in template library?

From: Ivan Vecerina (INVALID_use_webform_instead_at_vecerina.com)
Date: 02/28/05

  • Next message: john townsley: "vector" 
    Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 09:13:31 +0100

    "Lokicer" <lokicer@163.com> wrote in message
    news:cvua3b$974$1@mail.cn99.com...
    > I am a newbie in C++, it seems compiler must see the source code of
    > template classes(with .h files and .cpp files£©when compile. I want to
    > prevent others from getting .cpp files. How should i do?

    To instantiate template code for new (user-provided) data types,
    the compiler does need to see the template source code (which
    is commonly left into .h files). You can't get around that,
    but your template code could be a thin layer around non-template
    code (stored in .cpp files) that you distribute into a
    compiled library.
    It is common enough for proprietary C++ libraries to be
    distributed as, e.g. on Windows, .h files and a .lib+.dll
    compiled library (NB: this is OT here, ask on a platform-
    specific newsgroup).

    When you do that, you need to be aware potential
    incompatibilities among C++ compilers on some platforms
    (while the way to call C-style functions is pretty much
    standardized everywhere, on some operating systems/processors
    classes/overloaded functions/etc can be implemented in
    incompatible ways -- different "ABI"s).
    This is probably what Jack Klein was thinking about.

    Besides that, C++ is actually among the languages that
    are the more difficult to reverse-engineer from compiled code.

    Ivan 

    -- 
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