Why do we need both - export maps AND -fvisibility=hidden/__attribute__((visibility("default")))

[David Holmes]

On 5/02/2014 5:09 PM, Jeremy Manson wrote:
> Also, don't you statically link libstdc++ into Hotspot?

Normally yes.

> It would break
> many, many things if the symbols from that were exported from Hotspot
> (pretty much anything with native code written in C++).

Doe static linking automatically re-export all the visible symbols of 
the linked in library? That would seem undesirable under most circumstances.

David

> Jeremy
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 4:51 PM, David Holmes <david.holmes at oracle.com
> <mailto:david.holmes at oracle.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Volker,
>
>
>     On 5/02/2014 2:18 AM, Volker Simonis wrote:
>
>         I know this is an old topic and actually I was involved myself
>         in some
>         of these discussions. Nevertheless, the topic regularly pops up
>         again
>         and every time this happens and I take a deeper look at the topic I
>         have the feeling I still haven’t completely understood it.
>
>         Current state:
>
>         On Linux, we are currently compiling the HotSpot with the
>         '-fvisibility=hidden' flag which effectively hides all symbols
>         except
>         the ones which are explicitely declared to have default visibility
>         (with the macro JNIEXPORT which expands to
>         __attribute__((visibility("__default")))).
>
>         This was introduced by "6588413: Use -fvisibility=hidden for gcc
>         compiles" [1] in HS 21 and it is potentially a good change
>         because it
>         hides all symbols by default and it enables certain compiler
>         optimizations on some platforms (see "How To Write Shared Libraries"
>         [2]).
>
>         However, independently of this change, we still use export maps
>         (i.e.
>         --version-script=mapfile___reorder) in addition to setting the
>         explicit
>         symbol visibility. While [2] recommends this as good practice, I
>         don't
>         see the real benefit of having both -
>         -fvisibility=hidden/____attribute__((visibility("__default")))
>         and export
>         maps except if we were maintaining a versioned ABI. But as far as I
>         can tell, that's not the case for HotSpot.
>
>         So finally my question: is there any real reason (except the
>         fact that
>         "we always did it that way") why we would still need to use export
>         maps on Linux where symbol hiding is done with
>         -fvisibility=hidden/____attribute__((visibility("__default")))
>         anyway?
>         Dropping the maps would make the maintenance of exported symbols
>         easier as we wouldn't have to keep the export map files and the
>         JNIEXPORT functions in sync.
>
>
>      From past discussions isn't this because we need the map files to
>     expose dynamically generated symbols? (And so we must then also add
>     the other visible symbols.) Does that make the visibility attributes
>     redundant? I'm not sure, but they serve as a clear statement of
>     intent anyway.
>
>     David
>
>
>         Thank you and best regards,
>         Volker
>
>         [1] https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/__browse/JDK-6588413
>         <https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-6588413>
>         [2] http://www.akkadia.org/__drepper/dsohowto.pdf
>         <http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/dsohowto.pdf>
>
>