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POC++ interface design around shared library boundaries
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copied!<p>Suppose I have two projects. One is an application and the other is a shared library that contains common, reusable code that could be used by more than just this application.</p> <p>My application uses STL, and my shared library also uses STL. The first problem here is that my shared library is using STL. If I ever build a newer version of STL into my application but I do not rebuild my shared library because it is not necessary, then we will have compatibility issues right away.</p> <p>My first thought to solve this issue is to not use STL at all in the interface to the shared library classes. Suppose we have a function in my library that takes a string and does something with it. I would make the function prototype look like:</p> <pre><code>void DoStuffWithStrings( char const* str ); </code></pre> <p>instead of:</p> <pre><code>void DoStuffWithStrings( std::string const& str ); </code></pre> <p>For strings this will probably be OK between different versions of STL, but the downside is that we are going from <code>std::string</code>, to <code>char*</code>, and back to <code>std::string</code>, which seems like it causes performance issues.</p> <p>Is the boxing/unboxing of raw types to their STL counterparts recommended? This becomes even worse when we try to do this to a <code>std::list</code>, since there really is no "raw type" I am aware of that we could easily pass it as without doing some sort of O(n) or similar operation.</p> <p>What designs work best in this scenario? What are the pros/cons of each?</p>

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