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From: jbuck@janus.Berkeley.EDU (Joe Buck)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: c++ name mangler sought
Message-ID: <41587@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 4 Apr 91 03:00:16 GMT
References: <41560@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <1991Apr3.170401.4903@netcom.COM> <18279@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM>
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In article <18279@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM> ned%cad@MCC.COM (Ned Nowotny) writes:
>Some of us would also like to link objects compiled by one C++ compiler with
>objects compiled by another.  Is the ANSI C++ committee looking into linking
>and C++ object libraries?  Or, does anyone care about libraries; modules as
>opposed to classes; name space pollution; interoperability with compilers for
>C, C++, Ada, etc. which may, by necessity, come from different vendors; and
>so on?

Yes, there certainly are good arguments for compatibility.

>(By the way, are there any reasons, other than political, that G++ does not
>use the same name mangling scheme as the one documented in the ARM?  Or has
>that changed since G++ 1.37.1?)

You'd need to ask Mike Tiemann for the details.  I do know this: FSF has
always had a very strict policy against reading the code (e.g. Unix source
code, cfront source code) that is being replaced by copylefted code, so
they can avoid any accusation of theft of trade secrets, violation of
copyright, etc.  They also can't read any Bell Labs internal memos, etc,
that document internals. When the first g++ came out, I doubt that the cfront
mangling scheme was published anywhere in the open literature.  How could
he have found it out?

From what I've seen, though, the cfront and g++ schemes are very similar.
They could, perhaps, be made the same and maybe ANSI should look into this.
This shouldn't be done by slavishly reverse engineering cfront; if the
C++ community decides it needs to be done in a uniform way, the uniform
way should be written up in a document and everyone should fix their
compilers.  Still, I think that in the long run name mangling should go away.

For library compatibility, though, we need more than name mangling
compatibility.  We need to define the stream class (at least partially:
vendors and libg++ could provide extra methods); we need to shoot those
who want to name the base class of their library Object and therefore
prevent anyone else from using it, etc. :-)
--
Joe Buck
jbuck@janus.berkeley.edu	 {uunet,ucbvax}!janus.berkeley.edu!jbuck