Re: [Cppunit-devel] Improving CppUnit portability

[Volker B. <boe...@we...>]

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Baptiste Lepilleur wrote:

>     CppUnit is getting close to having a stable core. I'd like to start
> working in an area that has not been really tackled yet: portability.
> 
>     First, I'd like to start making up a list of things that need to be done
> to make CppUnit more portable. I know some facts, but I hardly have enough
> experience to know every compilers oddities. Also, I'd like to get feedback
> on your experience in solving some of those issues.

I find ACE (http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE.html) a very good
source on many portability issues. ACE runs on a number of platforms
I'ld never like to work on, namely compilers missing namespace or even
exception support. ACE uses a lot of preprocessor macros to hide most
of the platform differences. I think that's fine given that C++ is not
as portable as Java (at least as it would be without the preprocessor
trickery...).

See e.g. how the configuration item ACE_HAS_ANSI_CASTS from

  http://cvs.doc.wustl.edu/ace-cvs.cgi/ACE_wrappers/ace/config-g++-common.h

is used in

  http://cvs.doc.wustl.edu/ace-cvs.cgi/ACE_wrappers/ace/config-all.h

to define the macro ACE_const_cast(TYPE, EXPR) which expands to the
proper const_cast<> on platforms which support it and to old style
cast only where necessary.

Regards,
Volker
-- 
Volker Boerchers, boe...@we...