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by pjmlp 120 days ago
Compiler vendors are free to chose what ABI stability their C++ implementations provide.

ISO C++ standard is silent on how the ABI actually looks like, the ABI not being broken in most C and C++ compilers is a consequence of customers of those compilers not being happy about breakages.
2 comments
Ygg2 120 days ago
Yeah but ABI stability isn't really just magic dust you sprinkle in you language/compiler and make it more stable

It's a straightjacket that has application in few select cases.

Things ABI prevents in C++:

- better shared_ptr

- adding UTF8 to regex

- int128_t standardisation

- make most of <cstring> constexpr

And so on: https://cor3ntin.github.io/posts/abi/

I get you might have particular criteria on this. But it's a feature that comes with huge, massive downsides.

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LexiMax 120 days ago
> Compiler vendors are free to chose what ABI stability their C++ implementations provide.

In theory. In practice the standards committee, consisting of compiler vendors and some of their users, shape the standard, and thus the standard just so happens to conspire to avoid ABI breakages.

This is in part why Google bowed out of C++ standardization years ago.

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pjmlp 120 days ago
I know, but still go try to push for ABI breaks on Android.
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