make symbols hidden by default if the compiler supports it. This reduces DSO lib size by about 2% and symbol relocations by about 5%.

Right.. I now have a complete KDELIBS / KDEBASE running build with gcc+visibility patch and default visibility set to hidden. This means that nothing is exported in shared libs by default. I'm now wondering if this *huge* patch will stand any chance of being applied (before doing too much extra work on it) ?! And no I don't mean for 3.3 :-) The patch won't have any adverse effects as far as I can think off, since it can completely be disabled by defining KDE_EXPORT as empty.

Here's what it takes to make KDE work with hidden default:

• am_edit / unsermake needs a patch to export kdeinitmain generated stubs
• kdelibs/dcop/dcopidl2cpp patch to handle LINK_SCOPE tag (which is already present in .kidl files)
• giant patch to place KDE_EXPORT on all classes that need exporting and on files which have kdeinit/kdeinitmain, KCModule functions, kss_ screensaver functions, ...

Any thoughts?! Questions?

While playing with this symbol stuff.. I noticed that other libs were also exporting way more than needed.

For instance... libkateinterfaces has exports for all the private methods & private slots of all the classes it implements.

I was able to reduce the symbols by manually adding an attribute to the private parts (source parts.. not the other kind :-) ... ie.

#define HIDE __attribute__((visibility ("hidden"))

and then...

private:
void methodX() HIDE;

This worked.. but it seemed strange that there was no better way to do this.. so I put the question to gcc-devel:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gcc.devel/51574

Esp. the answer of Giovanni Bajo was interesting, pointing me to this webpage:

GCC Symbol Visibility Patch
http://www.nedprod.com/programs/gccvisibility.html

Reading through the gcc PR issues.. I noticed a familiar name.. so guess some KDE developers are already onto this.

Has the dllexport/dlllocal macro as shown on the gcc visibility patch page been considered yet?! (ie. for KDE4 coding style)

I'd like to remind anyone that next weekend KDE 3.3.2 will be tagged and prepared for release. Please use the remaining time to review your applications/translations and if you know of any missing piece on kde.org/announcements/changelogs/changelog3_3_1to3_3_2.php (there should be many), please either add it yourself or let me know.

As I didn't get additional feedback on the KDE 3.4 release schedule, I would like to use this mail to declare it active. The 3.4 feature list closes for additions next week, so we can release an alpha1 in early december.

BTW: I can't answer mails on weekends as long as I have no internet at home, which still might take a while. But I will answer, so don't worry.