Why is stdint.h so little used?

Why is stdint.h so little used?

[Bjørn Forsman]

Hi all,

I see that grub has an stdint.h header in
grub-core/lib/posix_wrap/stdint.h. But hardly any code use it. Why is
that?

When projects have these custom types (e.g. grub_uint32_t) it just
makes porting more difficult IMHO. I'm currently working on a xHCI
driver for GRUB, and I'd like to use stdint.h types (where
appropriate). Any objections?

Best regards,
Bjørn Forsman

Re: Why is stdint.h so little used?

[Bjørn Forsman]

On 30 November 2016 at 11:12, Bjørn Forsman <bjorn.forsman@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I see that grub has an stdint.h header in
> grub-core/lib/posix_wrap/stdint.h. But hardly any code use it. Why is
> that?

The only reason I can think of, in general, is if you want to support
pre-C99 toolchains. But in GRUB's case, the stdint.h header is
provided by the project's source code, so it'll always be available.
Even for pre-C99 toolchains.

Best regards,
Bjørn Forsman

Re: Why is stdint.h so little used?

[Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko]

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All files in posix_wrap are only for porting code to GRUB with little
modification. No GRUB-specific code should use it.

On Wed, 30 Nov 2016, 13:17 Bjørn Forsman <bjorn.forsman@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I see that grub has an stdint.h header in
> grub-core/lib/posix_wrap/stdint.h. But hardly any code use it. Why is
> that?
>
> When projects have these custom types (e.g. grub_uint32_t) it just
> makes porting more difficult IMHO. I'm currently working on a xHCI
> driver for GRUB, and I'd like to use stdint.h types (where
> appropriate). Any objections?
>
> Best regards,
> Bjørn Forsman
>
> _______________________________________________
> Grub-devel mailing list
> Grub-devel@gnu.org
> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
>

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Re: Why is stdint.h so little used?

[Bjørn Forsman]

On 24 January 2017 at 02:33, Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko
<phcoder@gmail.com> wrote:
> All files in posix_wrap are only for porting code to GRUB with little
> modification. No GRUB-specific code should use it.

That only explains half of it :-)

What is better about writing grub_uint32_t instead of uint32_t? (To me
it looks like a pointless indirection.)

Best regards,
Bjørn Forsman

Re: Why is stdint.h so little used?

[Andrei Borzenkov]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2017 at 10:08 AM, Bjørn Forsman <bjorn.forsman@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 24 January 2017 at 02:33, Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko
> <phcoder@gmail.com> wrote:
>> All files in posix_wrap are only for porting code to GRUB with little
>> modification. No GRUB-specific code should use it.
>
> That only explains half of it :-)
>
> What is better about writing grub_uint32_t instead of uint32_t? (To me
> it looks like a pointless indirection.)
>

GRUB boot time code is built without any standard headers at all, so
there is absolutely no difference between defining grub_uint32_t or
uint32_t, in both cases it must be defined in one of grub headers.
There is no indirection at all, because no uint32_t exists. For your
project you can add defines to avoid non-functional changes and then
simply do mass replace ones when porting is complete :)