IDL4 expanded usage of anonymous sequence/array

[jwillemsen]

See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64233975/opendds-idl-sequence-type, the following construct leads to non compilable code. It does use an anonymous type which tao_idl front end doesn't warn for, ridlc does reject it

typedef sequence<octet> Pixels[2];
module message {
  @topic
  struct Image {
    unsigned short width;
    unsigned short height;
    unsigned short bytesPerPixel;
    Pixels data;
  };
};

Compile error:

testTypeSupportImpl.cpp: In function ‘bool OpenDDS::DCPS::gen_skip_over(OpenDDS::DCPS::Serializer&, Pixels_forany*)’:
testTypeSupportImpl.cpp:83:41: error: ‘sequence’ does not name a type; did you mean ‘servent’?
     if (!gen_skip_over(ser, static_cast<sequence*>(0))) return false;

ridl correct error output

IDL::ParseError: Anonymous type definitions are not allowed!
    t4.idl: line 1, column 34

[mitza-oci]

IDL4 support is incomplete. It's a work in progress.

The Developer's Guide for 3.15 will describe what's supported and what's not. The short answer is that using an anonymous sequence/array that's directly contained in a struct will work. Other cases probably won't.

The reason for this is that there are use cases where a code generator writes the IDL, not a user. That particular kind of IDL needs to be accepted. When it's the user directly writing it then that user can use typedef as in IDL3.