mulle-c11

🔀 Cross-platform C compiler glue (and some cpp conveniences)

This project provides a C header that enables more feature-rich compilation across various compilers and platforms. It also contains the basic documentation for mulle-c development. mulle-c11 is used by all mulle-c or mulle-objc projects.

Release Version	Release Notes
	RELEASENOTES

Features

• includes <stdalign.h>, if detected as available, or provides replacement code. This enables alignof and alignas.
• provides __builtin_expect, if not available.
• provides dummy implementations for __has_feature and __has_attribute, which always return 0 (NO).
• provides the MULLE_C_STRINGIFY macro, which creates a string from the given identifier (MULLE_C_STRINGIFY( a) creates "a").
• provides the MULLE_C_CONCAT macro to concatenate two identifiers (MULLE_C_CONCAT( a, b) creates ab).
• provides MULLE_C_ASSERT for compile time assertions, e.g. MULLE_C_ASSERT( sizeof( foo) <= sizeof( void *)
• provides support for constructor and destructor functions see below
• provides a collection of undocumented, fancy preprocessor evaluation macros in mulle-c11/mulle-c11-eval.h

API

• SYNTAX.md explains the naming scheme in data structures used throughout the mulle-c projects

Cross platform attributes

Compilation hints like __attribute__(( <name>)) are usually only available for gcc and clang. These mulle-c11 macros allow compilation with other compilers.

Attribute	mulle-c11	Description
always_inline	MULLE_C_ALWAYS_INLINE	Force inlining of function
const	MULLE_C_CONST	Mark function return value as constant given same input parameters
deprecated	MULLE_C_DEPRECATED	Mark function as deprecated
never_inline	MULLE_C_NEVER_INLINE	Prevent inlining of function
nonnull	MULLE_C_NONNULL_FIRST	Marks first function parameter as not accepting NULL. There is also MULLE_C_NONNULL_SECOND and combinations like MULLE_C_NONNULL_FIRST_FOURTH up to five parameters
noreturn	MULLE_C_NO_RETURN	Mark function as not returning (e.g. abort)
returns_nonnull	MULLE_C_NONNULL_RETURN	Mark function as never returning zero (NULL)

Constructor/destructor example

Constructor functions are executed when the containing object file is loaded. In a static executable, this is guaranteed before main. In shared library environments, it depends on when the shared library is loaded. Destructor functions are called before the unloading of the shared library or before the exit of the executable.

MULLE_C_CONSTRUCTOR( load)
static void   load( void)
{
   printf( "load\n");
}
MULLE_C_DESTRUCTOR( unload)
static void   unload( void)
{
   printf( "unload\n");
}

MULLE_C11_CONSTRUCTOR( f) void f( void); will expand differently, depending on the compiler and operating system:

clang/gcc

__attribute__((constructor)) void  f( void);

MicroSoft Windows

static void f(void);
  __declspec(allocate(".CRT$XCU")) void (*f_)(void) = f;
  __pragma(comment(linker,"/include:" p "f_"))

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Add

This project is a component of the mulle-core library. As such you usually will not add or install it individually, unless you specifically do not want to link against mulle-core.

Add as an individual component

Use mulle-sde to add mulle-c11 to your project:

mulle-sde add github:mulle-c/mulle-c11

To only add the sources of mulle-c11 with dependency sources use clib:

clib install --out src/mulle-c mulle-c/mulle-c11

Add -isystem src/mulle-c to your CFLAGS and compile all the sources that were downloaded with your project.

Install

Install with mulle-sde

Use mulle-sde to build and install mulle-c11:

mulle-sde install --prefix /usr/local \
   https://github.com/mulle-c/mulle-c11/archive/latest.tar.gz

Manual Installation

Download the latest tar or zip archive and unpack it.

Install mulle-c11 into /usr/local with cmake:

cmake -B build \
      -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local \
      -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/usr/local \
      -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release &&
cmake --build build --config Release &&
cmake --install build --config Release

Acknowledgments

The Preprocessor evaluation feature is indebted mostly to C Preprocessor tricks, tips, and idioms and Preprocessor: __VA_ARGS__ : count arguments

Author

Nat! for Mulle kybernetiK