What does the thing between "class" and the class name in VC++ mean?

Question

I have a third-party VC++ based DLL I want to use in a Java project, along with its header. I figured out BridJ is a good solution for this, but the header is so complex that JNAerator chokes at it and just freezes at 100% CPU, finally bailing out with OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space. So I have to write the bindings for the needed things from the header myself.

Now, I have to guide BridJ via annotations. For this, I looked at the header and I found a part looking like the following which I do not understand:

namespace SomeNamespace {
  class SomethingStrange TheClass {
    public:
      TheClass();
    // more
  }
}

So, what I want to know: What does SomethingStrange mean here? Is this another child namespace? And how do I wire this up correctly in BridJ?

Answer 1

When building a DLL, SomethingStrange will boil down to __declspec(dllexport).

When using that DLL, it will boil down to __declspec(dllimport).

They allow a class declaration to be used by both the author and users of a particular DLL.

What they "boil down to" is normally controlled by compiler flags controlled via the project settings.