Re: Inline::C with multiple *.c

[Anonymous Monk]

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;
...

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

[gri6507]

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?

[Anonymous Monk]

Any suggestions?

You can use http://perldoc.perl.org/perlapi.html#Callback-Functions like call_pv to call the perl version of a function

It helps if you skip the script concept and create modules (namespace other than main ) -- see Inline#Writing Modules with Inline

Otherwise I think you'll have to create commonlib and link both a.c and b.c against it

IIRC it is possible to manually manipulate modname.def so that you can link with -lmodname and call the c versions, but not without modifying Inline::C -- this might help (never used it) Module::CAPIMaker - Provide a C API for your XS modules

Also curious Re: How to use C Libraries in Perl Script?, ExtUtils::Depends - Easily build XS extensions that depend on XS extensions, InlineX::XS - Auto-convert Inline::C based modules to XS, InlineX::C2XS