[Libreoffice] map files: how to update? [was: cppu::OPropertySetHelper ABI backwards compatibility]

[Stephan Bergmann]

On Aug 25, 2011, at 9:42 PM, Michael Meeks wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-08-25 at 18:09 +0200, Lionel Elie Mamane wrote:
>> Now, I face the .map files; there, I'd appreciate some help; I think
>> I've reverse-engineered enough of the GCC one to get a correct one (at
>> least, I could do a modicum of testing with GCC), but:
> 
> 	Um ;-) I havn't been following the rest of the change, but when it
> comes to these map files - the general approach is to blame the madness
> that created these [ we need to drop them in libreoffice 4.0 in favour
> of uniform visibility markup I think ].

Symbol versioning does have its merits, so dropping it is not ideal (C/C++ visibility markup only covers the visibility aspect of map files, not the versioning aspect, at least for now).  But, sure, manually maintained map files for C++ components are far from ideal as well…

> 	Then you check in the version that works with gcc - and (as if by
> magic) some toiling MSVC++ / Windows user (and/or Mac user) finds the
> problem and expands the hole through the map file for their platform.
> 
>> 1) Someone that knows better than me should check.
> 
> 	oh - and if you're polite you ping the list / mail a known windows /
> mac user & ask them to fix it :-)
> 
> 	Hopefully, the tinderboxes will help catch this stuff quickly too :-)

A problem is that missing symbols can go unnoticed as long as no client code needs them, only to bite an extension developer who happens to be the first to need the given symbol (and then will have to wait making available his extension until a version of LO has been released that fixes the omission).

As already mentioned in this thread, see <http://udk.openoffice.org/common/man/apicppclasses.html> for details of what symbols to list in the map files.

-Stephan