Re: Inline machinery

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Greg Troxel <address@hidden> writes:

>   The `inline.h' machinery is confusing for some compilers (e.g.,
>   DEC/Compaq/HP CC).  The issue is the following: when an inline keyword
>   is supported and a non-GCC compiler is used, the header looks like this:
>
>     extern SCM scm_cell (...);
>
>     static inline
>     scm_cell (...)
>     { ... }
>
> Perhaps I'm confused too, but the compiler's complaint seems correct.

Yes, indeed---did I seem to imply that the compiler was wrong?  :-)

> The patch seems ok, but I also wonder if the problem couldn't be solved
> leaving the declarations by defining macros that expand properly to
> extern/not and using them as
>
>
>
>     INLINE_SCOPE_DECLARATION_KEYWORD SCM scm_cell (...);
>
>     INLINE_SCOPE_DEFINITION_KEYWORD inline
>     scm_cell (...)
>     { ... }

That seems quite complex to me (i.e., does not really improve
readability/maintainability), for little in return since its use is
limited to `inline.h' anyway.

Currently, we assume that only GCC knows how to handle "extern inline".
I'm not sure this assumption is true in practice (doesn't C99 specify
it?), but it's probably "good enough".

Thanks,
Ludovic.