[cfe-dev] [LLVMdev] MSVC++ ABI compatibility is not a Windows requirement

[Óscar Fuentes]

Joshua Cranmer 🐧 <Pidgeot18 at gmail.com>
writes:

>> Fair point, but being ABI compatible DOES enable certain
>> applications, for example, working with existing binaries that can't
>> be recompiled.
>
> I would like to add that some of the Windows APIs require C++ ABI and
> are not (easily) usable from C, so some applications are only viable
> if Clang can be generally compatible with the MS C++ ABI.

Please name one of those APIs. Are they OS APIs?

If you are saying that using those APIs is more easily done from C++
instead of the C/COM interface that they (most surely) have, you are
right. But let's recognize that MS is very careful about not forcing the
developer to use their own compilers to access OS APIs, so they always
provide a C/COM interface.