Path: utzoo!dciem!dretor.dciem.dnd.ca
From: chk@dretor.dciem.dnd.ca (C. Harald Koch)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Manx sdb (silly VSprite messages)
Message-ID: <1689@dciem.dciem.dnd.ca>
Date: 2 May 89 15:24:38 GMT
References: <103@snll-arpagw.UUCP> <3755@mit-amt>
Sender: chk@dciem.dciem.dnd.ca
Reply-To: chk@dretor.dciem.dnd.ca (C. Harald Koch)
Distribution: na
Organization: NTT Systems, Inc., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 47

In article <3755@mit-amt> ralph@atrp.media.mit.edu (Ralph L. Vinciguerra) writes:
>In article <103@snll-arpagw.UUCP> paolucci@snll-arpagw.UUCP (Sam Paolucci) writes:
>>...The linker
>>appears to generate the executable fine, but it also prints a bunch of
>>messages all similar to:
>>
>>Structure definition 'VSprite' never completed.
>>
>>In other messages 'VSprite' is replaced by 'collTable', 'LayerInfo_extra',
>>and 'Region'.  Nowhere in my main program or library functions do I use
>>any such structures.....
>
>I get these errors too, even not using any special compiler flags.
>I'd like to know what's going on too....
>  it makes me nervous.

As we all know :-), C allows you to declare a pointer to a structure without
declaring the structure itself. If you don't need to access the fields, you
don't need to declare the structure.

When you include intuition.h, you also include some of the graphics library
header files. These files declare structures containing pointers to
VSprites, LayerInfos, etc., but unless you include the appropriate header
files, the structures never get declared.

The linker is informing you that some structures have been referenced but
never declared, and thus that SDB will not be able to manipulate the fields
of these structures.

Unless you actually do want to access the structure contents (this is
uncommon) you don't need to worry about these messages.

One way around the problem is to always compile using a precompiled symbol
table containing all the amiga header files (i.e. include/*/* but not
include/*). This will result in SDB always knowing about all the Amiga data
structures. The only problem with this is that you get huge object files
(20-30K for average C files).

I hope this puts your minds at rest.

-- 
          EARTH          | C. Harald Koch  NTT Systems, Inc., Toronto, Ontario
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   AIR     mud       FIRE| chk@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca        (long-term address)
 soda water |   tequila  | chk@zorac.dciem.dnd.ca             (my current job)
          WATER          | chk@chkent.UUCP                (my machine at home)
Element chart from "Science Made Stupid".