C++ – Converting an application to use dlls. class ‘std::map<_Kty,_Ty>‘ needs to have dll-interface to be used by clients of class

Exporting from a DLL is platform-specific. You will have to fix this for Windows (basically use declspec(dllexport/dllimport) on the instantiated class template) and encapsulate the required code in your Windows-specific preprocessor macro.

My experience is that exporting STL classes from DLLs on Windows is fraught with pain, generally I try to design the interface such that this is not needed.

Unfortunately, your list is very much spot-on. The root cause of this is that DLL-to-DLL or DLL-to-EXE is defined on the level of the operating system, while the the interface between functions is defined on the level of a compiler. In a way, your task is similar (although somewhat easier) to that of client-server interaction, when the client and the server lack binary compatibility.

The compiler maps what it can to the way the DLL importing and exporting is done in a particular operating system. Since language specifications give compilers a lot of liberty when it comes to binary layout of user-defined types and sometimes even built-in types (recall that the exact size of int is compiler-dependent, as long as minimal sizing requirements are met), importing and exporting from DLLs needs to be done manually to achieve binary-level compatibility.

When you use the same version of the same compiler, this last issue above does not create a problem. However, as soon as a different compiler enters the picture, all bets are off: you need to go back to the plainly-typed interfaces, and introduce wrappers to maintain nice-looking interfaces inside your code.