RE: [Gcl-devel] gcl_signal

[Mike Thomas]

Hi  there.

| Likewise,
| the EXTER macro is meant for situations in which the same line can be
| used to allocate the space in one file, and provide an extern
| declaration in another, which is obviously not applicable here.

Yes, and if you'll allow me to indulge in some public paranoia in case there
is some misunderstanding here - I didn't put it there.

| In 2.7.0, we need to think about cleaning things up to retain out
| sanity.  I'll try to post some suggested guidelines for discussion
| purposes.  One idea that comes immediately to the fore is to separate
| out platform specific code in well defined and isolated regions,
| e.g. the .h files, i.e. as opposed to having many ifdefs in the main
| source files.  Likewise, we need to hopefully autogenerate all the
| info in the .h via configure.

Agreed.

One of the worst aspects of the code from my perspective is the use of
macros rather than functions to plug in large slabs of code which confuses
debugging and requires constant referral to headers.  I am also opposed to
the EXTER macro as it obscures which particular mode of behaviour is in
force at any given time - you either have to assume the state based on past
experience with the code or else check it up.  This could be a particularly
nasty trap if we start using DLL's on Windows at some stage, leading to
inadvertant and invisible duplicates of storage locations in different
DLL's.  I believe that declarations should go into the C files rather than
the headers.

I would also like to see the function prototypes brought into alignment with
their actual function definitions.

Cheers

Mike Thomas.