C++ -fvisibility=hidden -fvisibility-inlines-hidden

Question

I have a question about the C++ visibility attribute. I have read http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Visibility and yet I dont quite understand how it works.

I want use the visibility to be hidden on some of my shared libraries I have. I believe this means that the symbols are hidden ?

How are you meant to link the shared library then ? Is there a special way ? If I link it how it normally gets linked it doesnt work.

Can someone help me please.

Answer 1

-fvisibility=hidden makes all your symbols hidden by default.

What you then have to do, is choose which functions you want to be visible to users linking against your library and make them visible by marking them with a visible attribute.

E.g.

void __attribute__((visibility("default"))) Exported()
{
    // ...
}