Thread: Multi-platform support issues.

Personally, I don't see any problem with it. The idea would be of course to make as much of your code generic as possible, with the necessary platform specific stuff handled with preprosessor directives. I'm sure you could find a way to make it horribly unreadable doing so, but done even half way decent, I don't see a problem. Furthermore, that may be the only way to do it in some cases.

For example, if you had to have a screen paint function, you'd likely have to do more than just header file manipulation to make it paint correctly for both platforms. You could generalize the function prototypes perhaps, but when it came down to the actual code itself, it's likely that you'd be forced to do it that way.

I hate to say forced, because you can find some way around most situations, but some times it's best to go for what works well, or is clear to the reader. Or both.

Just my thought on the matter.

Quzah.

Try to put the any code which requires OS preprocessor directives into subroutines so that the code that contains preprocessor directives is not normally visible. That way you only need see the preprocessor ridden code when you need to edit it directly.

I guess what I'm saying is create a sort of platform specific level in your code which hides the implementation of OS specific code where-ever possible. Does wonders for readability and keeps all those preprocessor directives hidden away.

I normally have a platform.h header file which I include in all my .cpp files which contains a lot of platform specific defines and includes.

Here's an example of a simple platform.h that supports sockets.

Code:

#ifndef _INCLUDED_PLATFORM_H_
#define _INCLUDED_PLATFORM_H_

#ifdef _WIN32
#define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN
#include <winsock2.h>
#include <windows.h>
#define ERRNO (WSAGetLastError())
typedef int socklen_t;
#else
typedef int SOCKET;
#include <errno.h>
#include <arpa/inet.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#define wsprintf sprintf
#define closesocket(s) close(s)
#define ERRNO errno
#define stricmp(x,y) strcasecmp(x,y)
#define strnicmp(x,y,z) strncasecmp(x,y,z)
#endif

#ifndef INADDR_NONE
#define INADDR_NONE 0xffffffff
#endif

#ifndef INADDR_ANY
#define INADDR_ANY 0
#endif

#ifndef SHUT_RDWR
#define SHUT_RDWR 2
#endif

#endif // INCLUDED__PLATFORM_H_

Hope that helps.

-Daniel