Microsoft believed in hidden by default for shared libraries.
Don't say things like this: people will never hide anything ever again... ;-)
But seriously, making only those things public that are explicitly exported has some major benefits: for one, it minimizes the probability of clashes when combining multiple independent components.
It really should be a software developer's rule of thumb / best practice to have the minimal set of symbols necessary be exported. Anything exported that does not need to be is a maintenance burden, a learning curve hurdle for newbies, and increases the likelihood of name clashes with other libraries: all bad things.
So minimize your public APIs and your exports. 2 cents worth, D -- Powered by www.kitware.com Please keep messages on-topic and check the CMake FAQ at: http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_FAQ Kitware offers various services to support the CMake community. For more information on each offering, please visit: CMake Support: http://cmake.org/cmake/help/support.html CMake Consulting: http://cmake.org/cmake/help/consulting.html CMake Training Courses: http://cmake.org/cmake/help/training.html Visit other Kitware open-source projects at http://www.kitware.com/opensource/opensource.html Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe: http://www.cmake.org/mailman/listinfo/cmake
