[libdispatch-dev] linux + libdispatch + clang + blocks

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 06/08/2010 07:27 PM, David Leimbach wrote:
> This is not a strawman because it is not an argument.  I'm telling you
> that by definition, C99 says double underscore names are for the
> implementation.  It's also not arguable that unistd.h is not part of
> C99's standard library by definition, and therefore had no business
> using double underscored names to begin with.

Ok, it is not C99.  It's POSIX.  Come on.  You're "drawing the line" in 
the most unreasonable place.  Anyway.

>     BTW, from your favorite libc's _ctype.h:
>
>     static __inline int
>     __istype(__ct_rune_t c, unsigned long _f)
>     {
>             return (!!__maskrune(_c, _f));
>     }
>
>     __istype looks like a nice candidate for a new compiler keyword...
>
> Unfortunately for your counter-example, ctype.h is part of C99, and
> therefore a use of double underscored names is valid within that context
> as far as I can tell.

No, it is _ctype.h with the underscore.  Nowhere in that file I read 
that it is internal use only.  Anyway, 4 seconds of grep and here is 
this from FreeBSD pthread.h:

#define pthread_cleanup_push(cleanup_routine, cleanup_arg) \
{ \
   struct _pthread_cleanup_info __cleanup_info__; \
   __pthread_cleanup_push_imp(cleanup_routine, cleanup_arg, \
      &__cleanup_info__); \
   {

#define pthread_cleanup_pop(execute)
   } \
   __pthread_cleanup_pop_imp(execute); \
}

Tada, __cleanup_info__.  BTW pthread_cleanup_{push,pop} just _cannot_ be 
implemented without macros of this kind, so pthreads cannot be 
implemented without either following your interpretation of the C99 
standard, or breaking the user's namespace.

> Claiming that Apple and the LLVM team is being a poor collaborator for
> using __block is hard to maintain when that entire namespace was
> allotted to them by the C99 standards committee.

I never said that.  I said that the choice of __block without trailing 
underscores was poor.  Nobody's perfect, GCC did the same for __thread, 
but guess what, there is a fixincludes for that:

/*
  * __thread is now a keyword.
  */
fix = {
     hackname  = thread_keyword;
     files     = "pthread.h";
     files     = "bits/sigthread.h";
     select    = "([* ])__thread([,)])";
     c_fix     = format;
     c_fix_arg = "%1__thr%2";
};

 > As you say below, it's a young implementation, and possibly easier to
 > change that unistd.h.

No, it's set in stone now.  I'm not suggesting changing it.  I'm just 
suggesting that for the first time clang is showing the need for 
fixincludes.

> Maybe it could easily be __block__ going forward, but don't you think
> that's going to change a lot of people's libdispatch related code just
> to make things compatible with unistd.h from glibc?

I never proposed that.

> Isn't that worse
> than fixing glibc's header to comply with C99?

No need to say that again.  Repeating the same argument sounds like the 
preferred strategy of people writing to glibc bugzilla, just to see 
Drepper getting upset.  But we're not on glibc bugzilla, and I'm not 
Drepper.

>     2) past experience has suggested a workaround, namely "fixincludes".
>     Currently clang is being sloppy in this respect; it can afford that
>     because it only supports a few targets (basically Linux and Mac OS
>     X). It's a young project, so I don't have anything against that.
>       But sooner or later you will have to deal with the consequences of
>     not controlling the whole C99/POSIX environment.
>
> fixincludes was to deal with non-ANSI headers right?  How is that going
> to help with the __block keyword?

Nowadays fixincludes nowadays deals with all sort of problems.  It is 
even fixing old glibc to cope with removed extensions, or 
backwards-incompatible changes in the compiler (in addition to the above 
example with __thread, I can count two cases: C99 inline semantics, and 
removal of lvalue casts).  It can run arbitrary substitutions and sed 
scripts.  Here is another example:

/*
  *  Incorrect sprintf declaration in X11/Xmu.h
  */
fix = {
     hackname = x11_sprintf;
     files    = X11/Xmu.h;
     files    = X11/Xmu/Xmu.h;
     select   = "^extern char \\*\tsprintf\\(\\);$";

     c_fix     = format;
     c_fix_arg = "#ifndef __STDC__\n%0\n#endif /* !defined __STDC__ */";

     test_text = "extern char *\tsprintf();";
};

Paolo