Header inclusion in external toolboxes source files (GNU/Linux)

[Matteo Morelli]

Dear all,

  I'd like to point out two little issues I've encountered in applying
the external contribs installation procedure in Scilab-5.x. In order to
avoid a kilometric post, I decided to split my report in two separate
mails. The following is the description of first little issue I dealt
with. It only occurs by running Scilab-5.x under GNU/Linux.

  Let's take the toolbox skeleton and add to it the includes directory,
which the header file "foo.h" has been defined in. If we modified the
file src/c/csum.c as follows

    #include "../../includes/foo.h" /* header file inclusion */
    int csum(double *a, double *b, double *c)
    {
      ...
    }

and tried to build the toolbox, we'd get:

    [...]
       ilib_gen_Make: Copy csum.c to TMPDIR
       ilib_gen_Make: configure : Generate Makefile.
       ilib_gen_Make: Modification of the Makefile in TMPDIR.
       Running the Makefile
    ilib_compile: An error occured during the compilation:
     
    !csum.c:7:32: error: ../../includes/foo.h: No such file or directory  !
    !                                                                     !
    !make: *** [csum.lo] Error 1                                          !

    ilib_compile: The command was:
    make  
CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/share/scilab//../../include/scilab/malloc/ 
-I/usr/local/share/scilab//../../include/scilab/output_stream/ 
-I/usr/local/share/scilab//../../include/scilab/mexlib/ 
-I/usr/local/share/scilab//../../include/scilab/core/ " 
CXXFLAGS="-I/usr/local/share/scilab//../../include/scilab/malloc/ 
-I/usr/local/share/scilab//../../include/scilab/output_stream/ 
-I/usr/local/share/scilab//../../include/scilab/mexlib/ 
-I/usr/local/share/scilab//../../include/scilab/core/ " 
FFLAGS="-I/usr/local/share/scilab//../../include/scilab/core/ "
    [...]

  The error above occurs only under Linux, because ilib_gen_Make_unix()
copies all *.c files from src/c to TMPDIR without caring about the
headers the files include. Of course, you could expect the developers of
toolboxes fix the problem by changing the file inclusion directive to
#include <foo.h>, by adding something similar to the following
directory search option to CFLAGS

    1. "-I""" + tbx_src_path + "../../includes/""", in the Windows case

    or

    2. "-I" + tbx_src_path + "../../includes/", in the GNU/Linux case,

and, finally, by modifying the src builder with a piece of code like

    if MSDOS then
        ... 1. ...
    else
        ... 2. ...
    end

That's just what I made to fix the problem with the toolbox skeleton.
However, in my opinion, it would be better if Scilab handled the issue
automatically.

  Any comments or suggestions?

Regards,

--
Matteo