[ruby-talk:23214] () vs (...) in header files

There is a serious problem with including ruby.h and intern.h in C++
extensions under gcc 3.0.1 (we are getting ready to move to 3.0.1 here
VERY soon, so this is a big issue for us).

I have a patch for Ruby 1.6.5 available at:
  http://rm-f.net/~cout/ruby/ruby_unspecified_params_fix.patch

but I am not confident that I have done everything properly.  The biggest
problem I had was that rb_gc_mark takes a void*, but very often it is
called with a VALUE; I'm not sure what to do about this (for now, I just
cast VALUE to void*, but perhaps the opposite is more correct).

C has a (deprecated) "feature" that allows me to do this:

  int foo();

  int bar() {
    return foo(1, 2, 3);
  }

  int foo(int a, int b, int c) {
    return 42;
  }

The first line there tells the compiler that foo() has unspecified
parameters.  If it were possible, then (I think) this would be the same
as:

  int foo(...);

(this is not really legal ANSI C, since the standard requires at least one
argument in front of (...)).

C++ does not allow unspecified arguments using ().  Instead,

  int foo();

in C++ is the same as;

  int foo(void);

In g++ 2.95.3, int foo() in a C header file is interpreted as int
foo(...), so RUBY_DATA_FUNC and RUBY_METHOD_FUNC work as expected.
However, in g++ 3.0.1, even in a C header file int foo() is interpreted as
int foo(void).  This means that I have to (wrongly) cast my methods to
VALUE(*)(void) before I can pass them to rb_define_method().

Functions that have this problem include (but are not limited to):
  rb_protect_inspect
  rb_define_method_id
  rb_define_protected_method
  rb_define_private_method
  rb_define_singleton_method
  rb_define_private_method
  rb_protect
  rb_set_end_proc
  rb_thread_create
  posix_signal
  rb_glob
  rb_globi
  rb_define_variable
  rb_define_virtual_variable
  rb_define_hooked_variable
  rb_define_method
  rb_define_module_function
  rb_define_global_function
  rb_iterate
  rb_rescue
  rb_rescue2
  rb_ensure
  rb_catch

Also note that there are many methods in intern.h that have unspecified
parameters.  This is bad, since it allows me to pass wrong parameters (or
even no parameters at all) to such functions.  Functions that have this
problem include (but are not limited to):

  rb_thread_select
  rb_gc_mark_maybe
  rb_gc_mark
  rb_thread_wait_for

Possible solutions:

1) Have rb_define_method() and friends take (...) if __cplusplus is
defined, and take () if it is not (since (...) is not legal C).

2) Have rb_define_method() and friends take _((VALUE, ...)).  This seems a
good solution to me, since all METHOD_FUNCs take a parameter of self
anyway, and this would help to enforce that.  Not all the functions listed
above do take a parameter, so those that don't should take _((void)).
Please note the use of the _ for compatibility with pre-ANSI compilers.

3) A cross between the above solutions seems like a good compromise, since
it is (a) safe when compiling C++ extensions and (b) requires fewer
changes to the *.c files (it's a pain to have to had (RUBY_METHOD_FUNC)foo
to every line that calls rb_define_method).  This is the what I've done in
my patch: I've added a new macro, ___, which uses unspecied parameters
when compiling as C and specified parameters when compiling as C++, but
whenever possible, parameters are fully specified.

Comments?  Suggestions?

Paul