Re: Conditional Compilation

[Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com>]

Robert Dewar wrote:

> In article <8qauu3$7ei$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>   Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
> > Of course the drawback to this approach is that both
> > alternatives have to be compilable. That makes it suitable for
> > debug messages (as implied above), but unsuitable for making a
> > source file that handles multiple
> > host configurations.
>
> Well in a way it is a big advantage that it all has to be
> compilable. it is only too common to encouter a large C
> file, full of conditional stuff based on say ten different
> condition settings, and you just know that no one has
> systematically done all 1024 compilations, and sure enough
> you try a new combination, and the thing does not even compile,
> let alone work.

Ohhh yeah. I wasted a weekend once trying to get Wolfpack's Empire to
compile on my NT box using gcc. It has a whole mess of conditional
compilation code which assumes Windows means VC++ is being used. That
combined with the macros that detect gcc and pull in other stuff just
wreaked holy hell. A few hours of that is enough to convince anyone that
the man who forbade macros from Ada was a genius.

Of course it was no picnic getting it to work with the newer version of
VC++ I had either. But that's another C gripe for another time.

--
T.E.D.

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