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From: cosell@BBN-PROPHET.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: header files
Message-ID: <1069@caip.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Wed, 22-Jan-86 14:32:43 EST
Article-I.D.: caip.1069
Posted: Wed Jan 22 14:32:43 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jan-86 08:31:20 EST
Sender: daemon@caip.RUTGERS.EDU
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: Bernie Cosell <cosell@BBN-PROPHET.ARPA>

There have been a few comments about how all the .h files work (or don't).  The
trouble is neither with AmigaDOS nor the C compiler: there are simply *bugs* in
the include files.  The problem is that in, say, intuition.h it'll define some
struct whose fields are all sorts of other intersting structs -- intution.h
*MUST* #include *ALL* of the files it'll need to insure that those structures
are, themselves, declared.  And those #include files must be careful to,
themselves, #include the files to define the structs and parameters that *they*
need, and so on.  Unfortunately, there are a fair bunch of missing #includes,
and that shows up in the necessity of simple C programs having to include
*piles* of extraneous .h files that it really shouldn't.  It is pretty clear
how these problems arose: obviously at some early epoch of the system the .h
files were all clean and correctly treed.  Then, as the system evolved, folks
added new fields to various structures and the later adders were not so
careful, and so errors crept in.

I've fixed my system to have mostly rational .h file setups: what I've done is
be scrupulos about *NOT* being willing to include gratuitous .h files.  When I
get an error out of lc1, I search through the include hierarchy for the
undefined field or parameter that was missing.  The search will uncover two
things:
  a) files that use the structure or field or parameter, and
  b) the file that defines it.
With a little bit of thought it is pretty easy to psyche out just what the
`correct' tree of internal-includes ought to be.  You edit it in and you're
include world moves closer to rationality.  In pretty short order you're all
fixed up!  (In one or two cases, as I recall, you not only have to #include a
suitable file, but you also have to upgrade the file to have the
"#ifndef DIR_FILENAME_H" hack to aviod multiple-includes.  It's pretty obvious
when you get into it...)

an apology: I would have been delighted to post the actual changes it takes to
fix thing up... but...  I did *not* really keep track of what I was doing.  I
got annoyed one evening at the include=file craziness and, in my naivete, I I
really thought that I'd find one little edit to fix and I'd be done, so I just
dove in and began tweaking ...and tweaking... and tweaking.  Sorry about that!
But it really did only take about 1/2 hour to do the whole thing.  

  /Bernie