Re: Newbie: how to handle different prototypes?

[gnoop]

On Wednesday, June 22, 2005, at 11:10PM, Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>* address@hidden wrote on Wed, Jun 22, 2005 at 10:17:02PM CEST:
>> I have a basic question that I couldn't find in the info docs or the
>> goat book.  What's the right way to deal with a prototype for a system
>> library function that differs between platforms?  I know how to check
>> for headers and libraries, but don't know what the autotools way is to
>> get around different prototypes.
>> 
>> For example, on linux the scandir prototype is:
>> 
>>        int scandir(const char *dir, struct dirent ***namelist,
>>               int(*select)(const struct dirent *),
>>               int(*compar)(const struct dirent **, const struct dirent **));
>> 
>> and on darwin it's:
>> 
>>      int
>>      scandir(const char *dirname, struct dirent ***namelist,
>>          int (*select)(struct dirent *),
>>          int (*compar)(const void *, const void *));
>> 
>> I.e. the const is missing from darwin's 3rd parameter.
>
>Can't you just ignore this difference in your program?  If you pass a
>select function which eats a const argument, you are within ANSI C
>bounds in either case.  Ignore the warning some compiler may emit --
>it should rather be fixed.

At least some C++ compilers fail.  g++ fails with an err.  gcc just issues a 
warning.

>
>If you ever encounter significant function definition differences, you
>may look at the chapter
>  info Autoconf 'Library Functions'
>of the manual and the corresponding implementations in
>autoconf/function.m4 to search for a macro similar to your needs which
>you can adjust.  Be sure to use published macros only within your macro.
>

Thanks, Ralf. I finally found after following your reference that the info 
section that has examples for my problem is the 'Types' node (duh!).  And 
there and looking at actypes.m4 I found that AC_TYPE_SIGNAL is a nice 
simple example of checking for and defining a data type.

In the meantime, a solution I came up with was to define a macro using
the AC_PROTOTYPE macro in the autoconf macro archive, which defines
SCANDIR_ARG3 with the appropriate type.  (Note, C++ is required to raise
the compilation error.)

AC_DEFUN([AC_PROTOTYPE_SCANDIR],[
AC_LANG_PUSH(C++)
AC_PROTOTYPE(scandir,
 [
  #include <dirent.h>
 ],
 [
  const char * dir = 0;
  struct dirent ***namelist = 0;
  int(*select)(ARG3) = 0;
  scandir(dir, namelist, select, alphasort);
 ],
 ARG3, [const struct dirent *, struct dirent *])
AC_LANG_POP(C++)
])