I'm trying to work through an issue on a third party library. The issue is the library uses GCC's nested functions buried in a macro, and Clang does not support nested functions and has no plans to do so (cf., Clang Bug 6378 - error: illegal storage class on function).
Here's the macro that's the pain point for me and Clang:
#define RAII_VAR(vartype, varname, initval, dtor) \
/* Prototype needed due to http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=36774 */ \
auto void _dtor_ ## varname (vartype * v); \
void _dtor_ ## varname (vartype * v) { dtor(*v); } \
vartype varname __attribute__((cleanup(_dtor_ ## varname))) = (initval)
And here's how its used (from the code comments):
* void do_stuff(const char *name)
* {
* RAII_VAR(struct mything *, thing, find_mything(name), ao2_cleanup);
* if (!thing) {
* return;
* }
* if (error) {
* return;
* }
* do_stuff_with_thing(thing);
* }
The Clang User Manual states to use C++ and a lambda function to emulate. I'm not sure that's the best strategy, and a C project will likely not accept a C++ patch (they would probably tar and feather me first).
Is there a way to rewrite the macro so that's its (1) more accommodating to Clang, and (2) preserves original function semantics?
Clang doesn't support GCC nested functions, but it does support Objective C-style "blocks", even in C mode:
void f(void * d) {
void (^g)(void *) = ^(void * d){ };
g(d);
}
You need to invoke it with the clang
command rather than gcc
, and also (?) pass -fblocks -lBlocksRuntime
to the compiler.
You can't use a block as a cleanup
value directly, since it has to be a function name, so (stealing ideas from here) you need to add a layer of indirection. Define a single function to clean up void blocks, and make your RAII'd variable the block that you want to run at the end of the scope:
typedef void (^cleanup_block)(void);
static inline void do_cleanup(cleanup_block * b) { (*b)(); }
void do_stuff(const char *name) {
cleanup_block __attribute__((cleanup(do_cleanup))) __b = ^{ };
}
Because blocks form closures, you can then place the operations on your variables to cleanup directly inside that block...
void do_stuff(const char *name) {
struct mything * thing;
cleanup_block __attribute__((cleanup(do_cleanup))) __b = ^{ ao2_cleanup(thing); };
}
...and that should run at the end of the scope as before, being invoked by the cleanup on the block. Rearrange the macro and add a __LINE__
so it works with multiple declarations:
#define CAT(A, B) CAT_(A, B)
#define CAT_(A, B) A##B
#define RAII_VAR(vartype, varname, initval, dtor) \
vartype varname = (initval); \
cleanup_block __attribute__((cleanup(do_cleanup))) CAT(__b_, __LINE__) = ^{ dtor(varname); };
void do_stuff(const char *name) {
RAII_VAR(struct mything *, thing, NULL, ao2_cleanup);
...
Something like that, anyway.