gcc .lib

[mritter0]

I have gotten my project to compile with GCC (was using SAS/C) but I can't get it to link the reaction.lib. How do I do this from shell and makefile.

[emufan]

on the shell, did you tried this: gcc code.c reaction.lib -o code.exe ?
in the makefile just add reaction.lib at the end of the lines with your files to be compiled.

may work, maybe not

edit: post your makefile and some error messages. may help to find a solution.

[thomas]

IIRC gcc does not like .lib files, it needs .a files instead. There should be a libtoa program somewhere, probably coming with gcc.

Anyway, what is in reaction.lib you cannot work around?

[emufan]

thomas is right, but wrong tool name - read full article here:

Optionally I copied over the reaction.lib file too, but the doc says it will only work with SAS/C.
...
From your Ram: folder run hunk2aout amiga.lib reaction.lib(reaction.lib is optional)
This will create an a.out object file for every lib function in the amiga.lib hunk file.
(and any other lib files you include in your ram: folder and command line)
There will be many with names of obj*.

[Leffmann]

When you've converted from .lib to .a format, use

-lreaction

to link with Reaction. GCC (or LD) will look for "libreaction.a" in the default library directories, which are usually hard-coded into GCC, but you can specify additional directories with

-Lsome:path/

[mritter0]

I have to link the reaction.lib for these functions:

ChooserLabels(), FreeChooserLabels(), GetAttrs()

If there is a way to not use the lib, that would be great.

[emufan]

the hunk2aout doesnt work here with reaction.lib. but on amiga.org i found a hint to a replacement for reaction.lib:
Stephan Rupprecht PD Software - reactionlib.lha 12K 03-04-03 reaction.lib replacement
your three functions are listed, so this may work. give it a try.

[phx]

Theoretically you can use vlink to convert from any supported format to another. But it is recommended to split all the modules from reaction.lib into single object files first.

Otherwise you can get a single module with all functions from reaction.lib converted to a.out format like this:

vlink -baoutsun020 -Bforcearchive -r -o reaction.o reaction.lib

[mritter0]

I am at work and have not tried anything yet. Keep the posts coming, please.

What I don't understand is that if it is this "big of a deal" to link reaction.lib with GCC, why is there no reference to it in SDK? Why isn't there a converted lib already in there?

GCC is the preferred compiler for OS4.x. How is everyone else linking the lib? Or is it just an OS3.x issue?

Hopefully I will get a chance to try some ideas out tonight.

[mritter0]

I had the bright idea of compiling the source myself, using SAS/C on OS3.9, and not link the original lib, from Stephan Rupprecht's source above. The window opens, gadgets laid out, won't respond to any input.

From what I can tell this call

	GetAttrs(Objects[OID_WINDOW],
		WINDOW_SigMask,				&SignalsMask,
	TAG_DONE);

isn't been handled correctly??? The next call, Wait(), doesn't get any signals.

[mritter0]

I tried this again today.....same problem. First call of any function in the "lib" freezes execution.

It was intended for VBCC and GCC. I am using SAS/C. Some conflict maybe?

[phx]

Originally Posted by mritter0

I tried this again today.....same problem. First call of any function in the "lib" freezes execution.

When your freeze is perfectly reproducible, then it should be no problem to use a debugger and analyze the cause of the problem.

It was intended for VBCC and GCC. I am using SAS/C. Some conflict maybe?

VBCC and SAS/C are very compatible. Same ABI, same object and library format.

[alpyre]

Four years and no proggress on this? What a shame! I think we should solve this for all... so here we go!

I was preparing platform independent cross-compiler "HelloWorld" templates for the next update of my Atom package and realized that I can't compile my reaction HelloWorld for OS3 target because a reaction linker was missing for gcc. After some search I found out that this happens to be the only forum thread on the web about this problem.

Before we start thanks to mritter0 for the thread and all the repliers for all the valuable information.

Firstly what does not work:
- hunk2aout on reaction.lib does not work (no objects are extracted)
- vlink -baoutsun020 -Bforcearchive -r -o reaction.o reaction.lib seems to work fine but when you try compile your code it crashes the ld.

Here's what I did:
- I've downloaded the reaction.lib replacement by Stephan Rupprecht (as emufan mentioned above).
- Opened the c source on my IDE and enabled the auto init section:

#if 0 /* Enable it, if you need the autoinit code 
        (some are opened by the default init code)! */

- Within that section, I edited the libs[] array initialization as below to avoid confusing "near initialization" warnings by gcc.

 libs[] = {
            {(STRPTR)"window.class",       40L, &WindowBase},
            {(STRPTR)"requester.class",    42L, &RequesterBase},
            ...
            {(STRPTR)"images/glyph.image", 40L, &GlyphBase}
          };

- Saved and compiled it as below:

m68k-amigaos-gcc -c -Os reactionlib.c

- Renamed the output reactionlib.o as libreaction.o (for naming consistency with other linkers present).
- Then I packed the object with ar:

m68k-amigaos-ar rs libreaction.a libreaction.o

- Copied the created libreaction.a file into the libnix/lib directory (where libamiga.a and libmui.a are).
- Compiled my HelloWorld code with -noixemul -lamiga -lreaction flags and found out the executable freezes at the first call to any reaction function (just as mritter0 mentioned).

But I recognized this kind of freeze from previous experience. Amiga freezes just like this when you mistakingly call a function from a library before opening it. Where do the reaction libraries get opened then? I suppose OS4 startup code does it automatically, but where do our OS3 code opens them? Nowhere!

Looking back at the reaction.lib code, I realized that Stephan Rupprecht supplied two functions which open and close reaction libraries:
INIT_3_ReActionLibs()
EXIT_3_ReActionLibs()

Since my code tries to be platform independent I've added them to my code as below:
at the top of my buildGUI() function:

#ifndef __amigaos4__
  INIT_3_ReActionLibs();
#endif

and Into my cleanUp() function:

#ifndef __amigaos4__
  EXIT_3_ReActionLibs();
#endif

...and voila! It works flawlessly now (both with gcc 2.95.3 and gcc 6).

NOTE: These calls would be nicer in a custom startup code but in my case it will complicate things much so I'll stick to linking with -lamiga.a.

NOTE2: I'm new in Amiga coding so any further advice on this is highly appreciated. Thanks for reading.

[NovaCoder]

Cool, great work