Libc++ uses various "visibility" macros in order to provide a stable ABI in both the library and the headers. These macros work by changing the visibility and inlining characteristics of the symbols they are applied to.
- _LIBCPP_HIDDEN
Mark a symbol as hidden so it will not be exported from shared libraries.
- _LIBCPP_FUNC_VIS
Mark a symbol as being exported by the libc++ library. This attribute must be applied to the declaration of all functions exported by the libc++ dylib.
- _LIBCPP_INLINE_VISIBILITY
Mark a function as hidden and force inlining whenever possible.
- _LIBCPP_ALWAYS_INLINE
A synonym for _LIBCPP_INLINE_VISIBILITY
- _LIBCPP_TYPE_VIS
Mark a type's typeinfo and vtable as having default visibility. _LIBCPP_TYPE_VIS. This macro has no effect on the visibility of the type's member functions. This attribute cannot be used on class templates.
GCC Behavior: GCC does not support Clang's type_visibility(...) attribute. With GCC the visibility(...) attribute is used and member functions are affected.
- _LIBCPP_TYPE_VIS_ONLY
The same as _LIBCPP_TYPE_VIS except that it may be applied to templates.
Windows Behavior: DLLs do not support dllimport/export on class templates. The macro has an empty definition on this platform.
Note: This macro should be renamed _LIBCPP_TEMPLATE_TYPE_VIS.
- _LIBCPP_ENUM_VIS
Mark the typeinfo of an enum as having default visibility. This attribute should be applied to all enum declarations.
Windows Behavior: DLLs do not support importing or exporting enumeration typeinfo. The macro has an empty definition on this platform.
GCC Behavior: GCC un-hides the typeinfo for enumerations by default, even if -fvisibility=hidden is specified. Additionally applying a visibility attribute to an enum class results in a warning. The macro has an empty definition with GCC.
- _LIBCPP_EXTERN_TEMPLATE_TYPE_VIS
Mark the member functions, typeinfo, and vtable of the type named in a _LIBCPP_EXTERN_TEMPLATE declaration as being exported by the libc++ library. This attribute must be specified on all extern class template declarations.
This macro is used to override the _LIBCPP_TYPE_VIS_ONLY attribute specified on the primary template and to export the member functions produced by the explicit instantiation in the dylib.
GCC Behavior: GCC ignores visibility attributes applied the type in extern template declarations and applying an attribute results in a warning. However since _LIBCPP_TYPE_VIS_ONLY is the same as _LIBCPP_TYPE_VIS the visibility is already correct. The macro has an empty definition with GCC.
Windows Behavior: extern template and dllexport are fundamentally incompatible on a template class on Windows; the former suppresses instantiation, while the latter forces it. Specifying both on the same declaration makes the template class be instantiated, which is not desirable inside headers. This macro therefore expands to dllimport outside of libc++ but nothing inside of it (rather than expanding to dllexport); instead, the explicit instantiations themselves are marked as exported. Note that this applies only to extern template classes. Extern template functions obey regular import/export semantics, and applying dllexport directly to the extern template declaration is the correct thing to do for them.
- _LIBCPP_CLASS_TEMPLATE_INSTANTIATION_VIS
Mark the member functions, typeinfo, and vtable of an explicit instantiation of a class template as being exported by the libc++ library. This attribute must be specified on all template class explicit instantiations.
It is only necessary to mark the explicit instantiation itself (as opposed to the extern template declaration) as exported on Windows, as discussed above. On all other platforms, this macro has an empty definition.
- _LIBCPP_EXTERN_TEMPLATE_INLINE_VISIBILITY
Mark a member function of a class template as visible and always inline. This macro should only be applied to member functions of class templates that are externally instantiated. It is important that these symbols are not marked as hidden as that will prevent the dylib definition from being found.
This macro is used to maintain ABI compatibility for symbols that have been historically exported by the libc++ library but are now marked inline.
- _LIBCPP_EXCEPTION_ABI
Mark the member functions, typeinfo, and vtable of the type as being exported by the libc++ library. This macro must be applied to all exception types. Exception types should be defined directly in namespace std and not the versioning namespace. This allows throwing and catching some exception types between libc++ and libstdc++.
- _LIBCPP_NEW_DELETE_VIS
Mark a symbol as being exported by the libc++ library. This macro must be applied to all operator new and operator delete overloads.
Windows Behavior: The operator new and operator delete overloads should not be marked as dllimport; if they were, source files including the <new> header (either directly or transitively) would lose the ability to use local overloads of operator new and operator delete. On Windows, this macro therefore expands to __declspec(dllexport) when building the library and has an empty definition otherwise. A related caveat is that libc++ must be included on the link line before msvcrt.lib, otherwise Microsoft's definitions of operator new and operator delete inside msvcrt.lib will end up being used instead of libc++'s.