Hi,
Thank you Roger, but the problem is there anyway.
Linking statically is a partial solution as it only solves the issue for
those who install binary packages. And although you state that "...it is
for debugging and developing simple apps, it should never be on in a system
installation." the fact is that in some distros (at least Ubuntu and Linux
Mint) the library is distributed with PM_CHECK_ERRORS defined. This
suggests that people building the packages for these distros are not aware
of the purpose and consequences of defining this macro.
Something should be done. I propose several alternatives:
a) Deactivate this macro if not a debug build (that is, requiring that
macro DEBUG is also defined, i.e replacing line 48 in portmidi.c by::
#if defined(DEBUG) && defined (PM_CHECK_ERRORS)
b) Changing the macro name. i.e. PM_CHECK_ERRORS --> PM_DEBUG_CHECK_ERRORS
to emphasize that it should be only defined in debug builds.
c) Improve documentation oriented to distro maintainers
d) The initial one: transform this option into a runtime option.
Best regards,
Cecilio
2015-01-08 13:45 GMT+01:00 Roger Dannenberg <[email protected]>:
> Hi Cecilio,
> PM_CHECK_ERRORS is for debugging and writing simple apps where you'd
> rather crash with a sane error message to the console than fail silently.
> Since it is for debugging and developing simple apps, it should never be on
> in a system installation.
> Portmidi is pretty small -- I think you could save a lot of headaches
> by linking statically. Then you get exactly what you want and eliminate the
> need to install a dynamic library.
> -Roger
>
>
> On 1/5/15 5:42 PM, cecilio wrote:
>
> Hi Roger,
>
> I'm facing a frustrating issue related to portmidi error reporting. It
> seems that there are two alternatives:
>
> 1. print an error message to stdio and abort program execution, or
> 2. return an error code.
>
> In my app I would like to use the second option (handle all errors, so I
> would expect portmidi returning an error code/message) but the issue is
> that this is not a portmidi runtime option but a portmidi build time
> option, controlled by macro PM_CHECK_ERRORS. Therefore, *all* applications
> are forced to use the reporting option chosen by sysadmins (or by distro
> package builders, Linux Mint in may case).
>
> Moreover I can not distribute an application behaving consistently from
> one machine to another as a portmidi error (i.e. buffer overflow) would
> generate a crash in some machines but in others the app. will be able to
> handle the error, depending on the installed portmidi library.
>
> Probably I'm missing something but, if not, I would suggest to change the
> code to facilitate applications to choose the desired behaviour instead of
> being something determined by sysadmins when installing the portmidi
> library or by the distro portmidi package. Perhaps to have a run time
> option for setting the error reporting behaviour or to throw an exception
> instead of the 'exit(-1);' instruction, so that an application can opt for
> catching the exception or ignoring it and crashing. Could this be feasible?
>
> Thank you very much,
> Cecilio Salmeron
>
>
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