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Repost: gh_enter prototype


Hello everybody!

On March, 5th I posted the following message to the bug-guile list:

> With guile 1.2 the prototype of gh_enter is:
>   void gh_enter(int argc, char *argv[], void (*c_main_prog)());
> although it rather should be:
>   void gh_enter(int argc, char *argv[], void (*c_main_prog)(int, char *[]));
>  
> As well, the prototypes for the gh_new_procedure<x>_<y> could be improved,
> since it is already known, what the c-procedures have to look like.
>  
> This could save some potentially unsafe casts for the users of guile.
> Necessary casts should rather be performed within the gh_xxx functions.
> 
> Sorry if you already have discussed this issue (and for some reason not
> obvious to me have decided to keep it the way it is).

The problem with the unsafe casts arose since I am using C++ and forgot to
include gh.h as extern "C".

Still, improved type safety should be an issue. The problem I reported
seems obvious to me. But since it is that obvious I assume that there has
been discussion about it and that there might be a reason to have it the
way it is. It is easy to prepare a fix for it, but I got no reply on the
matter (see below) and thus am not motivated to put effort into something
that may have been rejected centuries ago.

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Something more general about the bug-guile mailing list:

Meanwhile I have sent a couple of mails to bug-guile, but only once got a
reply. I know that 'everyone is just busy coding', but from a users
perspective this is disappointing: If a user doesn't know whether some
problem is being fixed or has been fixed in some snapshot, he is not
motivated to put any effort into it by himself.

BTW: Tracking down bugs and preparing a good bug report already _is_ some
effort. Everyone who has tried to provide a smallest possible piece
of code to reproduce a problem knows that it can take quite some time.

To make things clear: It's not that I am expecting some 'hooray, a bug
report, you are our hero, thanks a lot' kind of thing. But some
information of the kind 'we know about it, but have no time to do it, what
about you?' or 'someone is working on it' or 'has been fixed since August
1863' would be nice.

Best regards, 
Dirk Herrmann