Most of the remaining Windows CE diffs are due to the 
lack of errno on Windows CE. There are other OS's that 
do not have errno (but they have a workalike method).

At first I had simply commented out all references in 
the code to errno, but that quickly became unworkable. 

Wince and NetWare use a function to set the per-
thread "errno" value. Although errno #defines  (like 
ERANGE) are not defined for Wince, they are defined 
for NetWare. Removing references to errno would 
artificially hobble the NetWare port.

These platforms also use a function to retrieve the 
current errno value.

The attached diff for pyport.h attempts to standardize 
the access method for errno (or it's work-alike) by 
providing SetErrno(), ClearErrno() and GetErrno() 
macros.

ClearErrno() is SetErrno(0)

I've found and changed all direct references to errno 
to use these macros. This patch must be submitted 
before the patches for other modules.

--

I see two negatives with this approach:

1. It will be a pain to think GetErrno() instead 
of "errno" when modifying/writing new code.

2. Extension modules will need access to pyport.h for 
the target platform.

In the worst case, directly referencing errno instead 
of using the macros will break only those platforms 
for which the macros do something different. That is, 
Wince and NetWare.

--

An alternative spelling/capitalization of these macros 
might make them more appealing. Feel free to make a 
suggestion.


--

It's probably incorrect for me to use SetErrno() as a 
function, such as

   SetErrno(1);

I think the semi-colon is not needed, but wasn't 
entirely certain. On better advice, I will fix these 
statements in the remaining source files if this patch 
is accepted.

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Typically, the semi-colon problem is dealt with as in
Py_SET_ERANGE_IF_OVERFLOW.

So, 

#define SetErrno(X) do { SetLastError(X); } while (0)

I don't think (but can't remember if) there is any problem
for single statements like you have.  You could probably do:

#ifndef MS_WINCE
#define SetErrno(X) errno = (X)     /* note no ; */
#else
#define SetErrno(X) SetLastError(X) /* note no ; */
#endif

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All identifiers defined in pyport.h must begin with "Py_".  
pyport.h is (and must be) #include'd by extension modules, 
and we need the prefix to avoid stomping on their 
namespace, and to make clear (to them and to us) that the 
gimmicks are part of Python's portability layer.  A name 
like "SetErrno" is certain to conflict with some other 
package's attempt to worm around errno problems; Py_SetErrno
() is not.  Agree with Neal's final suggestion about 
dealing with  semicolons.

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Here is an amended diff with the suggested changes. I've 
tested the semi-colon handling on EVT, it works as 
suggested.

--

Question: What is the prefered style, #ifdef xyz or #if 
defined(xyz) ?

I try to use #ifdef xyz, but sometimes there's multiple 
possibilities and #if defined(x) || defined(y) is needed. 
Is that okay?

--

Upcoming issue (hoping you address in your reply). There 
are many "goto finally" statements in various modules. 
Unfortunately EVT treats "finally" as a reserved word, even 
when compiling in non C++ mode.  Also, Metrowerks does the 
same.

I've changed all of these to "goto my_finally" as a quick 
work-around. I know "my_finally" sounds yucky, what's your 
recommendation for this? 

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Need to change the // comment to /* */.  gcc accepts this
for C, but it's non-standard (at least it was, it may have
changed in C99).

You can have 1 Py_SET_ERANGE_IF_OVERFLOW for both platforms
if you do this:

#ifndef ERANGE
#define ERANGE 1
#endif

#define Py_SET_ERANGE_IF_OVERFLOW(X) \
    do { \
        if (Py_GetErrno() == 0 && ((X) == Py_HUGE_VAL || \
                                   (X) == -Py_HUGE_VAL))  \
             Py_SetErrno(ERANGE); \
    } while(0)
I'm not sure of the usefulness of Py_ClearErrno(), since
it's the same on all platforms.  If errno might be set to
something other than 0 in the future, it would be good to
make the change now.

I would suggest changing finally to cleanup.

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I can post a new diff for the // or would you be willing to 
just change the patch you have?

I cannot use the same macros for Py_SET_ERANGE_IF_OVERFLOW
(X) because Wince doesn't have ERANGE. You'll note the use 
of Py_SetErrno(1) which is frankly bogus. This is related 
to your comment on Py_ClearErrno()

Using (errno == 0) as meaning "no error" seems to me to be 
a python source "convention" forced on it by (mostly) 
floating point side effects. Because the math routines are 
indicating overflow errors through the side effect of 
setting errno (rather than returning an explicit NaN that 
works on all platforms), we must set errno = 0 before 
calling these math functions. 

I suppose it's possible that on some platform "clearing the 
last error value" wouldn't be done this way, but rather 
might be an explicit function call. Since I was going 
through the source looking for all errno's, I felt it was 
clearer to say Py_ClearErrno() rather than Py_SetErrno(0), 
even though in the end they do the same thing on currently 
supported platforms.

I'm easy, if you want to replace Py_ClearErrno() with 
Py_SetErrno(0) I can do that too.

--

Regarding goto targets.. is it likely that "cleanup" might 
also collide with local variables? would _cleanup or 
__cleanup work for you?

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Brad, errno is required by ANSI C, which also defines the 
semantics of a 0 value.  Setting errno to 0, and taking 
errno==0 as meaning "no error", are 100% portable across 
platforms with a standard-conforming C implementation.  If 
this platform doesn't support standard C, I have to 
question whether the core should even try to cater to it:  
the changes needed make no sense to C programmers, so may 
become a maintenance nightmare.

I don't think putting a layer around errno is going to be 
hard to live with, provided that it merely tries to emulate 
standard behavior.  For that reason, setting errno to 0 is 
correct, but inventing a new ClearErrno concept is wrong 
(the latter makes no sense to anyone except its inventor 
<wink>).

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I've eliminated Py_ClearErrno() and updated all the source 
to use Py_SetErrno(0).  Attached is an updated diff for 
pyport.h

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Hi folks, just wondering if this patch is going to be 
rejected, or if you're all too busy and I have to be more 
patient ;-)

I have a passle of Python-CE folks waiting on me to finish 
checking in patches. This is the worst one, I promise!

Let me know what you want me to do, when you get a chance. 
Thanks

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Tim, I can check in or do whatever else needs to be done 
to check this in and move this forward.  How do you want to
procede?

Brad, I think most people are pretty busy right now.

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Hi folks,

I need to proceed with the port to NetWare so I have 
something to demo at Brainshare in March. Unfortunately 
future patches from me will include both WINCE and NetWare 
specific patches, though hopefully there won't be much 
other than config.h and this patch (which is required for 
NetWare).

Is there anything I can do to make this patch more 
acceptable? Send a bottle of wine, perhaps? ;-)

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Brad,
I think this patch might be asking for too much. You're asking that all accesses to errno be replaced by GetErrno() or SetErrno() calls, really...

And for many cases there is a workaround, where you don't have to change user code (i.e. the normal C code still uses what it thinks is an errno variable). On my system errno is
#define errno (*__error())
and the __error() routine returns a pointer to the errno-variable for the current thread. For the GetErrno function this would be good enough, and with a bit of effort you could probably get it to work for the Set function too (possibly by doing the actual Set work in the next Get call).

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The patch requires further surgery:

What is DONT_HAVE_TIME_H? If you want to test for presence
of <time.h>, you need to add HAVE_TIME_H to the autoconf
machinery, and all manually-maintained copies of pyconfig.h.
Including just the configure.in changes is fine; no need to
include changes to generated files.

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Any chances that updates to this patch are forthcoming?

If not, it will be rejected by October 1.

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I would very much like to move this forward. 

Is all you need is a refreshed diff without pyconfig.h diffs? 

I'll have to check why DONT_HAVE_TIME_H is in there. I 
think perhaps because the CE portion is using the Win32 
hand-made config, and only differs by a little bit. 

What about jackjansen's post from 4-19? I cannot use the 
macro trick he suggests because there are two different 
functions for accessing errno, one for get and one for set.

Regarding his comment about changing all errno accesses: 
I'm still committed to submitting appropriate diffs for the core 
and any other module ported to CE or NetWare. In fact, it's 
time to refresh my CVS copy. 

What do you suggest I check out? Head, or a specific 
revision?

Thanks

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You should work off CVS head.

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Brad,
if there's no other way to do your errno magic than by replacing all errno accesses with macros then so be it. *I* definitely don't want to hold off your patch because of that.

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Based on recent python-dev discussion, I wish to retract this 
patch. 

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Closing, since Brad retracted.  Brad, I hope you continue
your work.  It seems the last part of the discussion was
that Py_SerErrno() would be acceptable for the few places it
is necessary.  But continue to use errno in the code and for
Win CE, #define errno GetErrno().