Re: Problem with porting from 2003

I have a very strange problem with an application that I have been
porting from VS 2003 to VS 2005. I started this with Visual C++ 6.0,
so it's all nmake based, so it's not the IDE I am having problems with
- it's the compiler.

I have a system with a fairly large number of libraries. I build each
of these libraries as a DLL for development purposes. When I ship the
application, I do a static link. I change a directive call PUBLIC from
dllimport to dllexport appropriately as a either use a library, or
build a library. When I do a static link, PUBLIC is defined to be
blank. The approach works well as it reduces the cycle time for the
compile link. It also forces cleaner partitioning of the system. The
configuration can build libraries with circular dependency, but I
usually avoid this.

Anyway, all this worked sweetly with VS 2003. Now, with VS 2005, for
some of the libraries, I receive the following cryptic error:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\ATLMFC\INCLUDE
\afxcoll.h(689) : error C2248: 'CObject::CObject' : cannot access
private member declared in class 'CObject'
       C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\ATLMFC\INCLUDE
\afx.h(551) : see declaration of 'CObject::CObject'
       C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\ATLMFC\INCLUDE
\afx.h(522) : see declaration of 'CObject'
       This diagnostic occurred in the compiler generated function
'CPtrList::CPtrList(const CPtrList &)'

This occurs near the end of the compile and does not tell me the line
in my code that has initiated the problem.

I did some reverse engineering of this and found the class that seemed
to be causing this. It was a derivative of a Rogue Wave Stingray class
(call it class DERIVED). I was compiling a file in one directory,
including the header for DERIVED located in another directory. The
class DERIVED was prefixed with dllimport and all the classes in the
library being built are prefixed with dllexport. The reason I am
mentioning this is that I think its the import/export mechanism that
is failing.

When I move the file that failed compilation to the same directory as
DERIVED, the file compiles! It seems to me that this must be a bug.
Another point to note is that I am make very extensive usage of
templates in my own code.

Has anyone seen something like this?

Thanks,

Stan

ps I tried the same code with VS 2008 and receievd the same failure.