OpenEXR
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# Symbol Visibility in OpenEXR

Managing symbol visibility in a C++ library can reduce library sizes, and with the extra information, the optimizer may produce faster code. To take advantage of this, OpenEXR 3.0 is switching to explicitly manage symbols on all platforms, with a hidden-by-default behavior on unix-based platforms. Managing symbols has always been required for Windows DLLs, where one must explicitly tag functions for import and export as appropriate.

For C, this is trivial: just tag public functions or global variable as default visibility and leave everything else defaulting to hidden. However, in C++, this is not exactly the same story. Functions and globals are of course the same. And class member functions are largely the same, and other than the attribute specification mechanics, follow the same rules between gcc, clang, and msvc. However, types have richer information than they do in C. So, unless extra work is done, concepts for RTTI like the typeinfo and the vtable for virtual classes will be hidden, and not visible. These are referred to as “vague” linkage objects in some discussions.

It is with the “vague” linkage objects where different properties arise. For example, if you have a template, it is happily instantiated in multiple compile units. If the typeinfo is hidden for one library, then this may cause things like dynamic_cast to fail because then the same typeinfo is not used, and even though one might think that `ImfAttribute<Imath::Box2i>` are the same in two places, because they are instantiated in separate places, they may be considered different types. To compound the issue, there are different rules for this in different implementations. For example, a default gcc under linux allows one to link against otherwise private “vague” linkage objects such that the typeinfo ends up as the same entity. clang, for MacOS anyway, follows a stricter approach and keeps those types separate, perhaps due to the two level namespace they maintain for symbols.

Unfortunately, this is not clearly discussed as an overview of the differences between platforms, hence this document to add clarity. Each compiler / platform describes their own behavior, but not how that behaves relative to others. libc++ from the llvm project is the closest to providing comparative information, where by looking at how they define their macros and the comments surrounding, one can infer the behavior among at least windows DLL mode, then gcc vs. clang for unixen. Other compilers, for example, Intel’s icc, tend to adopt the behavior of the predominant compiler for that platform (i.e. msvc under windows, gcc under linux), and so can generally adopt that behavior and are ignored here. If this is not true, the ifdef rules in the various library `Export.h` headers within OpenEXR may need to be adjusted, and this table updated.

As a summary, below is a table of the attribute or declspec that needs to be used for a particular C++ entity to be properly exported. This does not address weak symbols, ABI versioning, and only focusing on visibility. Under Windows DLL rules, if one exports the entire class, it also exports the types for the member types as well, which is not desired, so these are marked as N/A even though the compiler does allow that to happen.

C++ vs Compiler | MSVC | mingw | gcc | clang
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
function | `dllexport/dllimport` | `dllexport/dllimport` | `visibility("default")` | `visibility("default")`
hide a function | N/A | N/A | `visibility("hidden")` | `visibility("hidden")`
`class(typeinfo)` | N/A | N/A | `visibility("default")` | `visibility("default")`
template class | N/A | N/A | `visibility("default")` | `type_visibility("default")`
template data | N/A | N/A | `visibility("default")` | `visibility("default")`
class template instantiation | `dllexport/dllimport` | N/A | N/A | `visibility("default")`
enum | N/A | N/A | auto unhides (N/A) | `type_visibility("default")`
extern template | N/A | `dllexport/dllimport` | `visibility("default")` | `visibility("default")`

With this matrix in mind, we can see the maximal set of macros we need to provide throughout the code. NB: This does not mean that we need to declare all of these, just that they might be needed. `XXX` should be substituted for the particular library name being compiled (`OPENEXR`, `OPENEXRUTIL`, `OPENEXRCORE`, `IEX`, `ILMTHREAD`, `IMATH`).

macro name | purpose
--- | ---
`XXX_EXPORT` | one of export or import for windows, visibility for others
`XXX_EXPORT_TYPE` | for declaring a class / struct as public (for typeinfo / vtable)
`XXX_HIDDEN` | used to explicitly hide, especially members of types
`XXX_EXPORT_TEMPLATE_TYPE` | stating the template type should be visible
`XXX_EXPORT_EXTERN_TEMPLATE` | exporting template types (i.e. extern side of extern template)
`XXX_EXPORT_TEMPLATE_INSTANCE` | exporting specific template instantiations (in cpp code)
`XXX_EXPORT_TEMPLATE_DATA` | exporting templated data blocks
`XXX_EXPORT_ENUM` | exporting enum types

For a new library, the preference might be to call `XXX_EXPORT` something like `XXX_FUNC`, and rename things such as `XXX_EXPORT_TYPE` to `XXX_TYPE` for simplicity. However, historically, OpenEXR has used the `_EXPORT` tag, and so that is preserved for consistency.

- LLVM libc++ visibility macros: https://libcxx.llvm.org/docs/DesignDocs/VisibilityMacros.html

- GCC visibility wiki: https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Visibility

- Apple library design docs: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/DynamicLibraries/100-Articles/DynamicLibraryDesignGuidelines.html

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