How protect source code in template library?

[Lokicer]

Hi!
I am a newbie in C++, it seems compiler must see the source code of
template classes(with .h files and .cpp files£©when compile. I want to
prevent others from getting .cpp files. How should i do?

Thanks!

[Jack Klein]

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 13:25:39 +0800, "Lokicer" <lo*****@163.co m> wrote
in comp.lang.c++:

Hi!
I am a newbie in C++, it seems compiler must see the source code of
template classes(with .h files and .cpp files£©when compile. I want to
prevent others from getting .cpp files. How should i do?

Thanks!

Then don't distribute your code with template classes. Provide
binaries of pre-compiled classes only with header files. Be prepared
to produce many different versions for different operating systems,
compilers, and even versions of the same compiler.

Or select another language. C++ is not particularly designed for
this.

--
Jack Klein
Home: http://JK-Technology.Com
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[Ivan Vecerina]

"Lokicer" <lo*****@163.co m> wrote in message
news:cv******** **@mail.cn99.co m...

I am a newbie in C++, it seems compiler must see the source code of
template classes(with .h files and .cpp files£©when compile. I want to
prevent others from getting .cpp files. How should i do?

To instantiate template code for new (user-provided) data types,
the compiler does need to see the template source code (which
is commonly left into .h files). You can't get around that,
but your template code could be a thin layer around non-template
code (stored in .cpp files) that you distribute into a
compiled library.
It is common enough for proprietary C++ libraries to be
distributed as, e.g. on Windows, .h files and a .lib+.dll
compiled library (NB: this is OT here, ask on a platform-
specific newsgroup).

When you do that, you need to be aware potential
incompatibiliti es among C++ compilers on some platforms
(while the way to call C-style functions is pretty much
standardized everywhere, on some operating systems/processors
classes/overloaded functions/etc can be implemented in
incompatible ways -- different "ABI"s).
This is probably what Jack Klein was thinking about.

Besides that, C++ is actually among the languages that
are the more difficult to reverse-engineer from compiled code.
Ivan
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