C++ Tools CD

Guys @ ROOL I see you’ve now reduced the price of the C++ Tools CD as it no longer has to include 15% VAT.

I’d like to suggest that you update your C++ Tool page to detail the contents of the CD. After all it includes more than just the tools does it not?

Cue – ROOL sales pitch…

Indeed, I would be interested to see the changes made compared to the version I own.

Speaking of changes, I was wondering if changes could be made to some header files to ensure that system calls try to return “const” pointers when the information provided comes from a system area.

One example of this is the _kernel_oserror pointers returned by swi calls. I once nearly managed to construct an error block using such a pointer instead of a pointer to an internal error block, and reflected to the damage I could have done to the system if I was doing that from a C written module. A modified header using const _kernel_oserror would prevented the problem by having the compiler complain at my attempt.

First of all, adding a list of CD contents is a good idea so we’ll add that to the ToDo list.

Secondly, doing a list of differences from one CD to another is a messy and fiddly business. We can probably do this for the main tools once we’ve sorted out a generic tool/process for doing so for builds – this is also on our ToDo list. :)

Lastly, adding const to published header files is a bad idea. Yes, for a new API it is clearly a good thing but retrospectively adding this will break everyone’s existing code!