New submission from Christian Heimes <li...@cheimes.de>:

The setup.py helper function grep_headers_for() is used by ctypes build step to 
search header files for functions. The function kinda works on most platforms, 
but only by accident. On my system it opens all header files that match 
/usr/include/*.h and returns true if any (!) header file contains the string 
(!) "ffi_prep_cif_var". The check would also match "ffi_prep_cif_var" in a 
comment of an unrelated header file.

We cannot limit the search to "ffi.h" only, because that would break multiarch 
builds with a header file like this:

    #if defined(__i386__)
    #include "ffi-i386.h"
    #elif defined(__powerpc64__)
    #include "ffi-ppc64.h"
    ...

Solutions:

1) Use "AC_EGREP_HEADER" autoconf macro. It runs a header file through the C 
preprocessor
2) Use AC_LINK_IFELSE autoconf macro. This macro compiles and links code to 
detect if a library exports a function.
3) Re-implement any of the macros in pure Python (ugh!)
4) Just assume that libffi supports ffi_prep_cif_var, ffi_prep_closure_loc, and 
ffi_closure_alloc on our target platforms. According to [1] the functions have 
been around for over a decade.

I favor (4).

Ned, what about USING_APPLE_OS_LIBFFI? Is it still relevant?

[1] 
https://github.com/libffi/libffi/blame/48bdb02867edb7e9f3785ccb4bdff1087fb44246/include/ffi.h.in#L309

----------
components: Build, ctypes
messages: 404926
nosy: amaury.forgeotdarc, belopolsky, christian.heimes, meador.inge, ned.deily
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: setup.py grep_headers_for() is broken by design
type: behavior
versions: Python 3.10, Python 3.11, Python 3.9

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<https://bugs.python.org/issue45598>
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