system.pas_(re)

Fri, 20 Jun 1997 00:04:45 +0200

The African Chief wrote:

> No. SYSTEM.INC	 (which is $INCLUDEd into GPCTYPES.PAS)
> contains this;
>
> {.$DEFINE _Borland_16_Bit_}   { 16-bit Borland data types }
> {$DEFINE _Borland_Pascal_}   { Borland string types }

Ah, now I understand! Looks reasonable to me.

> Yes, it is giving me problems with certain things in the cygwin32 C
> headers. It would have made things a lot easier if they could be
> exported in units - but you can't have everything ! ;-)

Why not? This is gpc! ;-)

> >The only way to do it (AFAICS) are include files, or defines on the command
> >line. (BTW: does "-Drandom=RandReal" or such work, or could it be made to
> >work?) 
> 
> I am not sure.

I just tested it, it seems to work already!

> That would make my life a lot easier with translating C macros to
> Pascal. However, it may be of dubious long-term benefif. At the
> moment, I have to translate all those C macros into Pascal
> functions. This is bit tedious, but it is probably better in the
> long run. Who knows?

I think it's better to translate them to functions wherever possible,
though it is tedious. But there may be some things left that can't be
translated adequateley -- overloaded functions are one such thing
(perhaps some day they will be possible in gpc, too), and there may
be other things...

On a somewhat similar but different topic:

Perhaps the state of some compiler switches that influence the
generated code (e.g. range and stack checks when they're implemented;
probably not optimization) and all the defines that are active at the
beginning aof the compilation of a unit could be stored in the .gpi
file. When the unit is used, and automake is active, the compiler could
check if the current settings match those stored in the .gpi file, and
if not, have the unit recompiled. So, if one wants to change one switch
(e.g. the _Borland_16_Bit_ above), one could still use the automake
and have all units updated if necessary. (In the case of defines, this
would also require to store in the .gpi file which defines are tested or
used, so that changing an unrelated define will not cause to unit to be
recompiled.)

And how about something like "--autobuild" to compile all units whether
or not this seems necessary? This could be useful for a final
compilation of a project (probably with a highest optimization), or
to recompile something for a different platform in the same directory
without having to manually remove all the .{o,gp[mi]} files (this
happens to me often with DJGPP and Linux).
-- 
Frank Heckenbach, Erlangen, Germany
heckenb@mi.uni-erlangen.de
Turbo Pascal:   http://www.mi.uni-erlangen.de/~heckenb/programs.htm
Internet links: http://www.mi.uni-erlangen.de/~heckenb/links.htm

Frank Heckenbach (heckenb@mi.uni-erlangen.de)