Re: [HACKERS] How to compile, link and use a C++ extension

2015-08-18 Thread Craig Ringer
On 15 August 2015 at 00:51, Andres Freund  wrote:

>> I started my tests by cloning the contrib/worker_spi code, and when
>> transforming the code into C++, I could only note that C++ is not supported
>> in the provided Makefiles.
>
> Yes, that doesn't surprise me. Postgres itself doesn't need to care
> about looking for a usable C++ compiler et al.

I think it'd be necessary to add C++ support to PGXS to do this nicely.

Because PostgreSQL's headers have C++

extern "C" {

wrappers in them, you could potentially compile the whole extension
g++, using "extern C" to expose unmangled symbols. You'll run into
some issues due to incompatible compiler flags, though:

$ PATH=$HOME/pg/95/bin:$PATH make USE_PGXS=1 CC=g++
g++ -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -Wpointer-arith
-Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wendif-labels
-Wmissing-format-attribute -Wformat-security -fno-strict-aliasing
-fwrapv -fexcess-precision=standard -O2 -fpic -I. -I./
-I/home/craig/pg/95/include/postgresql/server
-I/home/craig/pg/95/include/postgresql/internal -D_GNU_SOURCE   -c -o
worker_spi.o worker_spi.c
cc1plus: warning: command line option ‘-Wmissing-prototypes’ is valid
for C/ObjC but not for C++
cc1plus: warning: command line option ‘-Wdeclaration-after-statement’
is valid for C/ObjC but not for C++
cc1plus: sorry, unimplemented: -fexcess-precision=standard for C++
: recipe for target 'worker_spi.o' failed
make: *** [worker_spi.o] Error 1


> How exactly do you need to use the C++ code? The easiest probably would
> be to have a separate object file, built using your own makefile rule,
> that contains a the C++ and provides a C interface, and then use that
> from a background worker purely written in C.

This is what I would advise too.

It helps to separate the PostgreSQL bits from the C++ bits, providing
a clean interface across which exceptions are not thrown.

It isn't safe to access PostgreSQL API from within your C++ code
anyway, so the C++ code can be compiled without any PostgreSQL
includes, exposing a pure C interface that your extension can then
link to as just another library via PGXS's SHLIB_LINK option.

-- 
 Craig Ringer   http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
 PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services


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Re: [HACKERS] How to compile, link and use a C++ extension

2015-08-14 Thread Andrew Dunstan



On 08/14/2015 02:10 PM, Peter Geoghegan wrote:

On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 10:28 AM, Tom Lane  wrote:

Yeah.  The painful issues you're going to face are not that.  They are
memory management (C++ "new" does not talk to palloc or vice versa)
and error handling ("throw" does not interoperate with PG_TRY()).

It's worse than that. Any use of longjmp() will cause undefined
behavior in C++. That's because each C++ object's destructor will not
be called (possibly other reasons, too).

I suggest looking at the PL/V8 code for an example of how to make C++
code work as a Postgres extension. IIRC they've made specific
trade-offs that might be useful for Jacques' use case too.



Yeah, although be aware that PLv8 still has odd buggy behaviours that I 
am not sure are not related to some C/C++ impedance mismatch.


cheers

andrew


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Re: [HACKERS] How to compile, link and use a C++ extension

2015-08-14 Thread Andres Freund
On 2015-08-14 11:10:14 -0700, Peter Geoghegan wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 10:28 AM, Tom Lane  wrote:
> > Yeah.  The painful issues you're going to face are not that.  They are
> > memory management (C++ "new" does not talk to palloc or vice versa)
> > and error handling ("throw" does not interoperate with PG_TRY()).
> 
> It's worse than that. Any use of longjmp() will cause undefined
> behavior in C++. That's because each C++ object's destructor will not
> be called (possibly other reasons, too).

Only if that longjmp goes through C++ code with non-POD objects. Which
you should pretty much never allow.

- Andres


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Re: [HACKERS] How to compile, link and use a C++ extension

2015-08-14 Thread Peter Geoghegan
On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 10:28 AM, Tom Lane  wrote:
> Yeah.  The painful issues you're going to face are not that.  They are
> memory management (C++ "new" does not talk to palloc or vice versa)
> and error handling ("throw" does not interoperate with PG_TRY()).

It's worse than that. Any use of longjmp() will cause undefined
behavior in C++. That's because each C++ object's destructor will not
be called (possibly other reasons, too).

I suggest looking at the PL/V8 code for an example of how to make C++
code work as a Postgres extension. IIRC they've made specific
trade-offs that might be useful for Jacques' use case too.

-- 
Peter Geoghegan


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Re: [HACKERS] How to compile, link and use a C++ extension

2015-08-14 Thread Tom Lane
Andres Freund  writes:
> On 2015-08-14 18:38:36 +0200, jacques klein wrote:
>> However I coudn't find any doc. about how to solve the problem of linking
>> C++ code and libs into the .so of my extension,
>> and nothing to solve the runtime-loading problem of the c++ specific .so
>> files ( for ex. to make work a simple usage std::string )

> libstdc++ (or whatever your platform uses) should be automatically
> loaded, I don't think you'll need to worry about that.

Yeah.  The painful issues you're going to face are not that.  They are
memory management (C++ "new" does not talk to palloc or vice versa)
and error handling ("throw" does not interoperate with PG_TRY()).

If you can build a bulletproof interface layer between your C++ code and
the surrounding C-coded backend, you can make it work, but that part won't
be any fun.  There's way too much temptation to just call assorted C-coded
functions from your C++, and *that won't work* with any reliability.

There are discussions of these issues in the pgsql-hackers archives.

regards, tom lane


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Re: [HACKERS] How to compile, link and use a C++ extension

2015-08-14 Thread Andres Freund
Hi,

On 2015-08-14 18:38:36 +0200, jacques klein wrote:
> However I coudn't find any doc. about how to solve the problem of linking
> C++ code and libs into the .so of my extension,
> and nothing to solve the runtime-loading problem of the c++ specific .so
> files ( for ex. to make work a simple usage std::string )

libstdc++ (or whatever your platform uses) should be automatically
loaded, I don't think you'll need to worry about that.

> I started my tests by cloning the contrib/worker_spi code, and when
> transforming the code into C++, I could only note that C++ is not supported
> in the provided Makefiles.

Yes, that doesn't surprise me. Postgres itself doesn't need to care
about looking for a usable C++ compiler et al.

How exactly do you need to use the C++ code? The easiest probably would
be to have a separate object file, built using your own makefile rule,
that contains a the C++ and provides a C interface, and then use that
from a background worker purely written in C.

Greetings,

Andres Freund


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