Link with custom function instead of crt one - c

I'm working on an application which defines it's own printf() to get around differences between the different CRTs out there or because some other platforms don't have it.
When building the application with gcc this automatically seems to work and the custom printf is used instead of libc's one; if I understand it correctly this is because of the order in which object files/libraries appear in the link command or maybe because object files are always searched before CRT libs, correct?
I'd like to do the same using msvc. Just building the project gives the expected 'LNK2005: _printf already defined in printf.obj' because printf is also in msvcrtd.lib. Fair enough. I know about /NODEFAULTLIB but that excludes everything resulting in unresolved references for everything but printf. I scanned through the other linker settings but couldn't find anything which allows this (apart from /FORCE maybe, but the 'might produce an invalid executable' comment doesn't make it sound like a good idea). Also nothing in the module definition file docs; the latter got me thinking it might be possible to create a stub library which has all exports from msvcrt.lib except printf but that seems a brittle solution even if it works.
In the end the question is simple: how do I tell msvc's linker it should skip msvcrt's printf definition and use the one from my printf.obj instead. Basically /NODEFAULTFUNCTION:printf or so. Just an answer for one single executable is ok, though I'd also be interested to know if and how it can be done when building a dll instead where the custom printf is exported: how to tell the linker it should use the export from my .lib instead of msvcrt.lib?
edit simplest repo I could find: create a file main.c:
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
printf("Hello");
return 0;
}
and a file printf.c:
int printf(const char *fmt, ...)
{
write(1, "ok\n", 3);
return 3;
}
For VS2013 (though the other versions might work as well): create a new empty C++ project and add both files then build. (For gcc: just gcc main.c printf.c and the resulting a.out prints 'ok')
The culptrit for VS is #include : without that it works ok but I have yet to find out if the original code allows getting rid of it in some way. But even if it does I'd still want to know if this can be solved at the link level.

Related

"undefined reference" error after adding function to a C project

I've added a new function wiringPiVersion() to wiringPi, but after I build and install the shared library, when I attempt to compile a small C program around it, I get:
wpi_ver.c:(.text+0xc): undefined reference to `wiringPiVersion'
However, when I include it in an XS based Perl module, all works well. I don't know enough about C to figure out what's going wrong here, and I've been searching for the better part of two hours trying different things to no avail.
Here's my small C program to test the new function:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <wiringPi.h>
int main (){
char * ver = wiringPiVersion();
printf("wiringPi version: %s\n", ver);
return 0;
}
Compilation that throws the error:
gcc -o ver wpi_ver.c -lwiringPi
The addition to wiringPi's header file:
extern char * wiringPiVersion(void);
The wiringPi's .c file addition:
#define WPI_VERSION "2.36"
char * wiringPiVersion(void){
return WPI_VERSION;
}
In my Perl module's XS file, I have:
char *
wiringPiVersion()
...and my Perl module's Makefile.PL
LIBS => ['-lwiringPi'],
...and after re-installing the Perl module, I can access the function without any issues in a test script.
I'm hoping this is something simple I'm overlooking which someone may be able to point out. My question is, how do I rectify this?
So it turned out that there were two .so files generated when I rebuilt wiringPi... one in the wiringPi's build directory way under my home directory, and the other in /usr/local/lib.
After a tip in comments, I added the library path explicitly:
gcc -o ver wpi_ver.c -L/usr/local/lib -lwiringPi
...and it all fell together and works as expected:
$ ./ver
wiringPi version: 2.36
Note: I have sent Gordon the patch in hopes it gets included in the next wiringPi cut.
Update: I received an email back from Gordon and he stated that currently, only the gpio application has the ability to report the version, so he advised that he's going to add something similar to my patch in a future release.
Although already solved, I added this answer to show what gave me the hint.
Error message "undefined reference" points to a linker error (cf. answer on SO), so its about checking if the correct library is drawn.

multiple definition of main first defined here

I'm new to programming and currently I'm learning C programming. I'm writing codes on the code blocks and in it using GCC compiler. When I create a new project, (as you know it creates main.c file with it) and due to that I'm not able to compile another file in that project.
File 1:
#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
int a,b,c,d;
printf("Enter three numbers\n");
scanf("%d%d%d",&a,&b,&c);
d=a;
if(b>d)
d=b;
if(c>d)
d=c;
printf("\n The maximum of three numbers is %d",d);
}
File 2: main.c
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
printf("Hello world!\n");
return 0;
}
When I compile the first programme, it shows the following error:
multiple definition of 'main'
first defined here
I've searched every where I could and I'm not able to solve this. In one of the answers here on stack overflow, someone had suggested to write this in
(Project->Build options...->Linker settings (tab))
-Wl,--allow-multiple-definition
When I wrote it, there were no errors. But it wasn't able to run my File 1 and instead, it runs that main.c file. Even when I close the main.c file, it opens there again and runs main.c file which gives the output "Hello World!".
Initially when I was using code blocks there were no such errors. I don't know why this is happening and I've not much knowledge about compilers.
As noted in comments you can only have one main function.
So when you start a new project you need to replace the main.c file with the main.c file you want to use. Or you can edit the 'hello world' main.c program.
When you start a new project in code::blocks you can get a new directory with a simple program that prints 'Hello World'. This file is usually main.c. You need to edit this file or replace it. The reason that code::blocks puts this simple main.c program in the new project is so that you can compile it and test your system without having to write a new program.
Some computer languages allow you to use the same function name for different functions ( which are identified by their parameters and sometimes return types ). That's called overloading. C does not allow this. Functions in C must have unique names.
The main() function is a special one in C as it is used as the standard entry point for applications. That is, the main() function will be called first and your application should start and (typically) end in that function.
As a beginner I would suggest you avoid automated editor features that create and build projects for you. You will miss out on learning how things work doing that. Use an editor to start from empty files and learn how they all connect and how to use the compiler from the command line. The command line is something every beginner should start from, IMO.
It may be harder to learn, but it will give you a much better feel for what is going on.
I guess what you maybe trying to do is have multiple sandbox "gists" that you may wanna run all as their own main function. If that is the case, then just close your project and open the files directly. As long as they are not in a project, they will run fine.

Using Go code in an existing C project

Ever since Go 1.5 came out, I started taking another look at how I could integrate it into an existing project of mine.
The project's codebase is written entirely in C for low level access to to hardware and other fun stuff. However, some of the higher level things are tedious, and I would like to start writing them in a higher level language (Go)
Is there any way I can call Go code from a C program? I installed Go 1.5, which added -buildmode=c-archive (https://golang.org/s/execmodes) which I am trying to get working.
However, I can't seem to get Go to generate the appropriate header files to allow my project to actually compile. When I generate the archive, I see the function in the exported symbols (using objdump), but without the header files to include gcc complains about the function not existing (as expected)
I'm quite new to Go - however, I love the language and would like to make use of it. Is there any idiomatic way ("idiomatic" gets used a lot in the world of Go I see...) to get this to play nicely with each other?
The reason I asked this question and specifically mentioned Go 1.5 is that according to this document, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nr-TQHw_er6GOQRsF6T43GGhFDelrAP0NqSS_00RgZQ/edit?pli=1#heading=h.1gw5ytjfcoke
Go 1.5 added support for non-Go programs to call Go code. Specifically, mentioned under the section "Go code linked into, and called from, a non-Go program"
To build an archive callable from C, you will need to mark them as exported CGo symbols.
For example, if I create a file foo.go with the following contents:
package main
import (
"C"
"fmt"
)
//export PrintInt
func PrintInt(x int) {
fmt.Println(x)
}
func main() {}
The important things to note are:
The package needs to be called main
You need to have a main function, although it can be empty.
You need to import the package C
You need special //export comments to mark the functions you want callable from C.
I can compile it as a C callable static library with the following command:
go build -buildmode=c-archive foo.go
The results will be an archive foo.a and a header foo.h. In the header, we get the following (eliding irrelevant parts):
...
typedef long long GoInt64;
...
typedef GoInt64 GoInt;
...
extern void PrintInt(GoInt p0);
...
So that's enough to call the exported function. We can write a simple C program that calls it like so:
#include "foo.h"
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
PrintInt(42);
return 0;
}
We can compile it with a command like:
gcc -pthread foo.c foo.a -o foo
The -pthread option is needed because the Go runtime makes use of threads. When I run the resulting executable it prints 42.
The code above work just fine, but gcc will complain about functions and headers.
The includes should be:
#define _GNU_SOURCE
#include <stdio.h>
#include "mygopkg.h"
If you forget the #define _GNU_SOURCE, the gcc will complain:
warning: implicit declaration of function 'asprintf'; did you mean 'vsprintf'? [-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
If you forget the #include "mygopkg.h", the gcc will complain:
warning: implicit declaration of function 'PrintString' [-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
The last but not less important. The build command line I recommend for production code is:
go build -ldflags "-s -w" -buildmode c-archive -o mygopkg.a
It'll save you 53% size of final mygopkg.a.

Call method from source file in another directory

I have a newbie question about the C programming language. I have looked around to find the answer in similar questions but I failed to figure it out.
Assume a simple project consisting of two dirs: src and test. The source and header files are defined by src/main.c, test/foo.h and test/foo.c.
src/main.c:
#include "../test/foo.h"
int main (void) {
int a = VAR; /* works, recognizes declared macro */
some_function(a); /* doesn't work, "undefined reference" */
}
test/foo.h:
#ifndef FOO_H
#define FOO_H
void some_function(int a);
#define VAR 2;
#endif
test/foo.c (redundant but to be complete):
#include "foo.h"
#include <stdlib.h>
void some_function(int a) {
printf("%d", ++a);
}
I created the project in Eclipse and I also compile with it, I figured it wasn't a linking error since the macro gets recognized but the method is not callable.
The reason why I'm using different directories is because I have a lot of files and would like my test code to be separate from my main source code. Note that src and test have the same parent directory.
Any ideas what's going on here? Am I missing something very obvious?
Any help would be much appreciated, thanks in advance!
edit: I'm working on a (Debian) Linux machine and Eclipse uses the gcc compiler.
edit2: Thanks to H2CO3's answer I learned it is indeed a linking error. Since compiling and linking manually every time is quite an overhead, I was wondering if anyone knows how to teach Eclipse to link executables from different directories?
--------------------- SOLUTION ---------------------
edit3: Lol the solution was very easy after all, all I had to do was create a "new source folder" rather than a "new folder". I feel stupid but thanks to you all for replying, H2CO3 in particular!
I figured it wasn't a linking error since the macro gets recognized but the method is not callable.
Non sequitur. Macros are expanded in the preprocessing phase. (And as such, they have nothing to do with linkage at all.) You do have a linker error.
What you have to do is compile both files then link them together, so something like this should work:
gcc -Wall -o dir_one/foo.o dir_one/foo.c
gcc -Wall -o dir_two/bar.o dir_two/bar.c
gcc -o my_program dir_one/foo.o dir_two/bar.o
Also, read this SO question/answer and/or this article to understand how the steps of the compilation process work together. (These are almost the same for C and C++, it's only the name mangling that usually differs.)

Minix 3 stdio.h doesn't recognize FILE *f

I'm developing something on Minix 3 and, when it comes to deal with io files, I got a problem.
In the code:
#include <stdio.h> /* If I don't call any stdio funcs compiler doesnt's complain*/
int main() {
FILE * fp; /* I get the following: " * not expected " */
return 0;
}
Already tried everything that comes to my mind, can't figure it out..
/EDIT/
From what I can tell, when I include something, if I call functions not related to structs, it's OK. Is it the structs ?
I will assume you have checked whether the Minix file is present, that it really defines the type FILE and that your include path provides the correct -Ioption to the compiler to find that file.
Depending on your environment it could happen that an environment variable INCLUDE exists and is recognized by your compiler to provide additional include paths, recognized even before the include options from the command line. In such a case it might happen to include a stdio.hfrom a different compiler. Visual Studio is known to provide such an environment variable by default, and that has bitten me once before.
EDIT: Running the preprocessor in isolation may help to find out what is really happening in any case. Verify that FILEis defined in the preprocessed version of your file.

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