[c++] Difference between static and shared libraries?

On top of all the other answers, one thing not mentionned yet is decoupling :

Let me speak about a real world production code,that I have been dealing with :

A very big software, made of >300 projects (with visual studio), mostly build as static lib and finally all link together in one huge executable , you end up with the following problems :

-Link time is extremely long. You might end up by more than 15min of link, for let's say 10s of compilation time -Some tools are on their knee with such a big executable , like memory check tools that must instrument the code. You might fall into reaching limits that had been seen as fools.

More problematic is the decoupling of your software : on this real world example, headers files of every project were reacheable from any others projects. As a consequence it was extremely easy for one developer to add dependencies; it was just about including the header, because link at the end will allwaws find symbols. It ends up by horrible cycling dependencies and complete mess.

With shared library, it's a bit of extra work because developer must edit the project build system to add the dependent library. I observed that shared library code tends to offer a cleaner code API.

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