gri6507 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Fellow Monks,

There has to be a better way to specify multiple C source files for use with Inline::C module. In my case, the C source files, header files, and the library are in the same directory as the Perl script. Here's what I am currently forced to do:

my $relSourcePath;
my $inlineCFile1;
my $inlineCFile2;
my $inlineBuildDir;
my $libDir;
my $incDir;
BEGIN {
    # this file is in the same directory as the rest of the sources
    $relSourcePath = File::Spec->rel2abs(dirname($0));
    die "\nInstall path must not have spaces.\n\n" if $relSourcePath =
+~ /\s/;

    # Need to build the path to the Inline C file here, so that we cou
+ld
    # reference it below
    my @dirs = ();
    push @dirs, $relSourcePath;
    $inlineCFile1 = File::Spec->catfile(@dirs, "file_a.c");
    $inlineCFile2 = File::Spec->catfile(@dirs, "file_b.c");
    push @dirs, ".Inline";
    $inlineBuildDir = File::Spec->catdir(@dirs);
    pop @dirs;
    $libDir = File::Spec->catdir(@dirs);
    $incDir = File::Spec->catdir(@dirs);
}

use Inline (
    C => Config => 
            LIBS      => "-L$libDir -lldv32",
            INC       => "-I$incDir",
            DIRECTORY => $inlineBuildDir,
);

use Inline C => "$inlineCFile1";
use Inline C => "$inlineCFile2";

[download]
Is there a better way?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Inline::C with multiple *.c
by syphilis (Archbishop) on Aug 24, 2012 at 01:12 UTC
    No problem for me with relative paths to 2 C files in the same directory: 
    C:\>type a.c

void foo() {
 printf("Hello from foo\n");
}


C:\>type b.c

void bar() {
 printf("Hello from bar\n");
}


C:\>type try.pl
use warnings;

use Inline C => "./a.c";
use Inline C => "./b.c";

foo();
bar();

C:\>perl try.pl
Hello from foo
Hello from bar

C:\>

    [download]
    It may well be that relative paths need to begin with "./".

    For LIBS and INC I think you do need to specify an absolute path which, for the cwd, should just be File::Spec->rel2abs('.')
    And, yes, that would need to be done in a BEGIN block.

    To me, that doesn't seem so bad - I guess it could always be improved.

    Cheers,
    Rob
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re: Inline::C with multiple *.c
by Anonymous Monk on Aug 24, 2012 at 08:13 UTC

    Is there a better way?

    Yes, chdir 

    #!/usr/bin/perl --
use Path::Class;
use constant THISFILE => "".file( __FILE__ )->absolute;
use constant THISDIR  => "".file( THISFILE )->dir;
BEGIN { chdir THISDIR or die $!; }
use Inline (
    C                 =>
    Config            =>
    LIBS              => "-Llib/relative -lrelative",
    INC               => "-Iinc/relative",
    BUILD_NOISY       => 1,
    CLEAN_AFTER_BUILD => 0,
    DIRECTORY         => 'RELATIVE', # INVALID VALUE?! IT MUST EXIST
);
use Inline C => file('a.c')->absolute, qw' NAME RelativeA ';
use Inline C => file('b.c')->absolute, qw' NAME RelativeB ';

use strict; use warnings;
...

    [download]

    See also swd, Toolkit, Syntax::Collector...

[reply]
[d/l]
      Thanks, your syntax does seem much cleaner and more intuitive.

      However, I just stumbled across another odd problem. I just changed my b.c so that it calls a function from a.c. Since a.c is built first, it generates a DLL (I'm doing this on Windows under Strawberry Perl). Next, when building b.c, it has to be linked against the first DLL. But I can't specify that in the config section above because it's common to all Inline::C files and clearly that DLL does not yet exist when compiling/linking a.c.

      Any suggestions?

[reply]
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