Re: [Quickfix-developers] QuickFix on VS2015

[K. F. <kfr...@gm...>]

Hello Dermot!

I think you may be running into a known (sem-) bug.  See comments,
in line, below.

On Sat, Jul 1, 2017 at 3:33 AM,  <dra...@ac...> wrote:
>
> Hi All, Can someone please tell me the position on QuickFix on VS2015. Is it supported?

I cannot speak as to whether QuickFIX is supported on VS2015.

> I upgraded the VS2012 solution file to VS2015 and got it to compile by changing one line of code in Utility.cpp, line 399:-

I think that there is an outright bug in the windows version of QuickFIX,
that, for whatever reason, was tolerated by some versions of VS, perhaps
VS2012.  Since I believe that it's a bug, then I wouldn't be surprised to
find out that it is no longer tolerated by newer versions of VS, for example,
VS2015.

> OLD: result = _beginthreadex( NULL, 0, &func, var, 0, &id );
> NEW: result = _beginthreadex( NULL, 0, (unsigned(__stdcall*)(void*)) &func, var, 0, &id );

Speaking from memory, "func" in an actual pointer-to-function (not the name
of a function which would then "decay" to pointer-to-function).  So &func is a
pointer-to-pointer-to-function and is therefore the wrong type for the third
argument of _beginthreadex.  (The third argument should be pointer-to-function.)

If I am right that your cast is a microsoftian version of
pointer-to-function, then
your cast is completely bogus:  You pass in the address of a location in memory
that holds the address of a function, but you lie to the compiler, and
tell it that
you are passing in the address of a function.

> Then compiled and ran the tradeclient example. Creating the initiator object took about 30 seconds (it was pretty instantaneous on VS2010) and then it became unstable after the call to initiator.start() - it crashed on the subsequent call to std::cout in application.run().

I'm not at all surprised that you get a crash.  I imagine that your
spawned thread
tries to run "random data" on the stack or heap somewhere as if it
were a function,
so you get "undefined behavior" / crash /.corruption.

> Any ideas?

I believe that the correct fix would be to remove the "&" from "&func", that is,
instead of using your cast, replace

   result = _beginthreadex( NULL, 0, &func, var, 0, &id );

with

   result = _beginthreadex( NULL, 0, func, var, 0, &id );

This worked for me some years ago with an older version of QuickFIX using
mingw_w64 instead of VS.

There are two old threads about this issue:

   https://sourceforge.net/p/quickfix/mailman/quickfix-developers/thread/CANL%3DBToQ%2BwdfkL-XwBO-pX8Wb%3DBFpmxxPD80kWNH50d7tF0SOg%40mail.gmail.com/#msg30386701

   https://sourceforge.net/p/quickfix/mailman/message/35810081/

The short story is that I think "&func" is a bug, my fix worked for me
using mingw_w64,
my fix seems to have worked for someone using "visual studio community
2015", the
bug version ("&func") worked for Mike Gatny on a 32-bit VS version
back in 2013, the
bug is not present in the linux version of QuickFIX, and I've never
understood why the
"&func" version ever compiled on windows (although I don't doubt that it did).

Unless I'm completely confused about what seems to be straightforward
c++, this really
is a bug in the windows version of QuickFIX and it ought to be fixed
in the QuickFIX source.

> Thanks,
> Dermot


Happy Hacking!


K. Frank