Prevent linking of mallocr.o file within libc.a - c

This is for my company, so I'm leery of being too specific, but I'll try.
I am attempting to add support for some existing ANSI C code to our platform. I am using GCC 4.7.2 as well as the GNU linker. We use part of newlib, but also some other C libraries, specifically libc.a. The end goal of this is to get an EXE or ELF image (this is for a PowerPC architecture micro) to put into the micro's RAM. This is being done on Windows XP. I am simply using a batch file, not a build environment or toolchain.
One of my build errors is a multiple definition problem of malloc/free functions. The cmd window spits out the error that there are definitions of these in both malloc.o and mallocr.o. Both of these are within libc.a. I've been told the "r" in mallocr.o is for reentrancy. I've also been told our platform does not support reentrancy.
I'm trying to resolve this error by preventing the linking of mallocr.o from within libc.a. This is the part where I am lost, I don't know how to do this. Google hasn't turned up anything helpful, and I haven't found a question on this site yet that answers my problem. I don't know if this is even possible.
There is really no specific code snippet to include in this question. Below is the error from the cmd window. I've *'d out company specific things I am not comfortable sharing.
c:\***\platform\2_2_0_r2013-2_x86-32\tools\gcc_4_7_2\ppc\bin\..\powerpc-eabi\lib\libc.a(mallocr.o): In function `free':
mallocr.c:(.text+0x19c): multiple definition of `free'
c:\***\platform\2_2_0_r2013-2_x86-32\tools\gcc_4_7_2\ppc\bin\..\powerpc-eabi\lib\libc.a(malloc.o):malloc.c:(.text+0x28): first defined here
c:\***\platform\2_2_0_r2013-2_x86-32\tools\gcc_4_7_2\ppc\bin\..\powerpc-eabi\lib\libc.a(mallocr.o): In function `malloc':
mallocr.c:(.text+0x468): multiple definition of `malloc'
c:\***\platform\2_2_0_r2013-2_x86-32\tools\gcc_4_7_2\ppc\bin\..\powerpc-eabi\lib\libc.a(malloc.o):malloc.c:(.text+0x0): first defined here

Related

How to work around the lack of InitOnceExecuteOnce in mingw (or mingw-w64) gcc?

I'm trying to build the OpenCL ICD Loader in mingw gcc - no problem to use mingw-w64 instead, it's just that mingw is what I have installed already. I don't use Visual Studio - I don't hate it, I know there's free versions, it's just not what I'm using.
The OpenCL ICD Loader doesn't build in mingw gcc. The main reason is because of lack of DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 support. But all the ICD Loader does is get a dispatch table (presumably from the OpenCL driver/whatever it loads) and provide functions that call through that dispatch table. Some minor changes to the conditional compilation in icd_dispatch.h and icd_dispatch.c can omit the relevant functions and remove the dependency (as already has to happen for Linux builds), and it actually looks like this may have been supported in the past - there's preprocessor symbols cl_khr_d3d10_sharing and cl_khr_d3d11_sharing already defined if relevant headers are included, they're just not being used to conditionally compile the relevant chunks of code.
So there's that and telling the code to omit DirectX10 and DirectX11 functionality in the first place (I just commented out a couple of header-file includes, though that's obviously not a real solution). But then there's one more problem...
The file icd_windows.c uses the Windows API function InitOnceExecuteOnce - MSDN docs here. mingw (and I think mingw-w64) doesn't support this function - the def file for Kernel32.dll lists it but neither the function nor the related identifiers INIT_ONCE, INIT_ONCE_STATIC_INIT and PINIT_ONCE are provided by header files.
The MSDN docs IMO don't explain this very well. It can't be essential (it didn't even exist before Vista) and it has something to do with safe initialization of DLLs, presumably in a multithreading context.
Unfortunately, if I don't really understand what it does, then I can't implement a workaround for its not being there.
Clearly this Windows API isn't specific to OpenCL, so presumably this is an issue that other people have run into for other projects. So is there a standard workaround for this?
Or failing that, can someone explain what is meant particularly by "synchronous one-time initialization"? Sorry if that's a dumb question, I don't have much experience of multithreaded, I'd have thought one-time initialization is just that, irrespective of synchronous vs. asynchronous - so long as a second thread can't re-enter the initialization, you don't want to initialize again, so there's nothing to do synchronously vs. asynchronously anyway.
Or does it mean that if another thread tries to call the initialization, it will wait for the already-running initialization to complete before it fails (or possibly succeeds without re-doing the initialization)?
I wasn't sure the opencl tag was appropriate, decided to include it because of the context, sorry if that was wrong.
I came across the same problem. You have to add following line at beginning of icd_windows.c, before all #includes:
#define _WIN32_WINNT 0x0600
This helps with missing InitOnceExecuteOnce declaration. I also had to modify CMakeLists.txt, replaced SHARED with STATIC in line 22 which is responsible for linking libOpenCL. I did this because linker complained about missing ld lib:
add_library (OpenCL STATIC ${OPENCL_ICD_LOADER_SOURCES})
After doing these two things I got libOpenCL.a in build subdir. Compilation continued and failed with some other error, but I ignored this. I took created lib and successfully used it to build simple OpenCL app which lists all available platforms, devices and their details.

How can I compile ANSI C99-based MEX code delivered with Linux makefiles under Win64 MATLAB?

It seems I've got a real problem here due to my lack of any knowledge about Linux systems:
I have downloaded some open source code, which
is written in C
uses complex.h, so I assume it is ANSI C99
comes with makefiles designed for compilation under Linux systems
provides interfaces to IDL, MATLAB, Python etc.
I am indeed familiar about compiling C/MEX files under Windows-based MATLAB environments, but in this case I don't even know where to start. The project is distributed in several folders and consists of dozens of source and header files. And, to begin with, the Visual Studio 2010 compiler I've used to compile MEX files until now does not comply with the C99 standard, i.e. it does not recognize the complex.h header.
Any help towards getting this project compiled would be highly appreciated. In particular, I have the following questions:
1) Is there any possibility to automatically extract compilation information from the MEX files and transfer it to Windows reality?
2) Is there any free compiler being able to compile C99 stuff, which is also easy to embed in MATLAB?
I have done this (moved in-house legacy code inc. mex files to Win64). I can't recommend the experience.
You will have to recompile, no way around it.
Supported compilers for mex depend on your MATLAB version
This File Exchange entry for using Pelles C may be a starting point (if it works with your version of MATLAB).
I am guessing that there is a main makefile which then works through the makefiles in the subdirectories - have a read through the instructions for compiling under Linux, it will give you some idea of what's going on and may also discuss what to do if you want to change compiler. Once you've found a compatible compiler, the next stage is to understand what the makefiles are doing and edit them accordingly (change paths, compiler, compiler flags, etc.)
Then, from memory (it was a while ago), you get to enjoy a magical mystery tour through increasingly obscure compiler errors. Document everything because if you do get it working, you won't be in a mood to do this twice.
MATLAB R2016b on Windows now supports the MinGW compiler. I'm successfully using this to compile code written primarily for Linux/gcc. I installed this from the Add-On menu in MATLAB (search MinGW).
For my case, I'm building with the legacy code tool. The only thing I needed to do differently than normal was to tell the compiler to support c99 via a compiler flag. This does the trick:
legacy_code('compile', def, {'CFLAGS=-std=c99'})
I had trouble getting the flag command just right (I had some extra quotes that apparently broke things), and asked The MathWorks, so credit is due to their support team for this.
If you are using mex, I would expect to do something very similar.
I would guess that the makefiles are irrelevant for your application; you will need to tell the mex or legacy_code function about all of the files necessary to build the whole application or link against pre-built libraries (which it sounds like you don't have).
I hope this helps!

Linking several dependent libraries into my "bare metal" C application

I am developing a bare metal C applications on an ST ARM-Cortex-M3. I have also developed libraries that are usable across all these applications.
I used to use Keil ARM-MDK, but want to move over to GNU-GCC. I thus downloaded the latest version of GCC and started recompiling the code.
Although similar questions to this one have been answered, it does not solve my problem ans therefore I am posting my question.
I have a problem with the following:
Lib_Flash has a function Read_Flash(). Lib_AppCfg links in Lib_Flash as it uses Read_Flash().
My application (App) links in both Lib_Flash and Lib_AppCfg. App also uses Read_Flash() for some specific FLASH checks.
In Keil MDK-ARM it worked fine.
With GCC, when functions using Lib_AppCfg are built, I get errors stating that Read_Flash() is an "undefined reference".
I am not sure where the problem lies. Is it in the linking of the Lib_Appcfg is built or is the problem when I link App?
Please advise. If you need additional information, please let me know.
The GNU linker by default searches the libraries once in the order listed on the command line. So if a library later in the list has a reference to symbol defined in an earlier library or object file, then it cannot be resolved.
The simple solution is to use library grouping; this causes the linker to repeatedly search a list of libraries until no further synbols can be resolved. If you are invoking the linker (ld) separately, then the linker options are:
--start-group _Flash _AppCfg --end-group
or the alternative form
-( _Flash _AppCfg -)
See the GNU linker manual for details. If driving the linker indirectly through gcc you pass linker options via the -Wl option, something like:
-Wl,-(,_Flash,_AppCfg,-)
I think.
It sounds to me like you have got an ordering problem in your libraries. Some linkers will rescan all the libraries on the command line till all references are resolved (or can't be resolved). Other linkers work sequentially along the link line.
In particular, this means that if library A defines a symbol SYM_A and library B which comes after library A references this symbol, it won't be resolved on the 2nd type of linker, and your link will fail.
To get round this, you can do one or more of the following
Reorder the libraries
Replicate libraries on the link line where
necessary
Refactor your libraries so there aren't mutual
dependencies between them (that is A references symbol SYMB, which
is defined in B, but B references SYMA)

Visual Studio cannot find some C libraries, such as stropts.h

I'm attempting to compile a sample c file that was given to me, but unfortunately, it's missing several libraries as some of the include files cannot find them. Namely: stropts.h, netdb.h, sys/socket.h, sys/ioctl.h, netinet/in.h, pthread.h, and unistd.h.
I've researched where I could fix these problems, but surprisingly there have been little to no results on this problem strangely. The Visual Studio command prompt isn't able to compile it until I can find these libraries. Anything I need to download/ link to fix this?
Those header files are not part of standard C or C++. Do not attempt to download the headers from other sources; even if you can get them to compile, they won't link properly since you don't have the implementations of the functions declared therein in a static library or DLL.
The simple fact of the matter is that the code you're trying to compile was written for Unix/Unix-like systems and it's not portable to Windows. You'll need to either significantly rewrite the code to use the equivalent Windows functionality or a 3rd-party platform-independent library (e.g. Winsock or Boost sockets for sockets), compile it on a Unix system (you could use a virtual machine if you want), or use a Unix compatibility layer such as Cygwin.

CMake: how to produce binaries "as static as possible"

I would like to have control over the type of the libraries that get found/linked with my binaries in CMake. The final goal is, to generate binaries "as static as possible" that is to link statically against every library that does have a static version available. This is important as would enable portability of binaries across different systems during testing.
ATM this seems to be quite difficult to achieve as the FindXXX.cmake packages, or more precisely the find_library command always picks up the dynamic libraries whenever both static and dynamic are available.
Tips on how to implement this functionality - preferably in an elegant way - would be very welcome!
I did some investigation and although I could not find a satisfying solution to the problem, I did find a half-solution.
The problem of static builds boils down to 3 things:
Building and linking the project's internal libraries.
Pretty simple, one just has to flip the BUILD_SHARED_LIBS switch OFF.
Finding static versions of external libraries.
The only way seems to be setting CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES to contain the desired file suffix(es) (it's a priority list).
This solution is quite a "dirty" one and very much against CMake's cross-platform aspirations. IMHO this should be handled behind the scenes by CMake, but as far as I understood, because of the ".lib" confusion on Windows, it seems that the CMake developers prefer the current implementation.
Linking statically against system libraries.
CMake provides an option LINK_SEARCH_END_STATIC which based on the documentation: "End a link line such that static system libraries are used."
One would think, this is it, the problem is solved. However, it seems that the current implementation is not up to the task. If the option is turned on, CMake generates a implicit linker call with an argument list that ends with the options passed to the linker, including -Wl,-Bstatic. However, this is not enough. Only instructing the linker to link statically results in an error, in my case: /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lgcc_s. What is missing is telling gcc as well that we need static linking through the -static argument which is not generated to the linker call by CMake. I think this is a bug, but I haven't managed to get a confirmation from the developers yet.
Finally, I think all this could and should be done by CMake behind the scenes, after all it's not so complicated, except that it's impossible on Windows - if that count as complicated...
A well made FindXXX.cmake file will include something for this. If you look in FindBoost.cmake, you can set the Boost_USE_STATIC_LIBS variable to control whether or not it finds static or shared libraries. Unfortunately, a majority of packages do not implement this.
If a module uses the find_library command (most do), then you can change CMake's behavior through CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES variable. Here's the relevant CMake code from FindBoost.cmake to use this:
IF(WIN32)
SET(CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES .lib .a ${CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES})
ELSE(WIN32)
SET(CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES .a ${CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES})
ENDIF(WIN32)
You can either put this before calling find_package, or, better, you can modify the .cmake files themselves and contribute back to the community.
For the .cmake files I use in my project, I keep all of them in their own folder within source control. I did this because I found that having the correct .cmake file for some libraries was inconsistent and keeping my own copy allowed me to make modifications and ensure that everyone who checked out the code would have the same build system files.

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