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Suggestion: mathlink.h / wstp.h shouldn't include <windows.h>

Posted 6 years ago

If it is at all technically feasible, it would be useful (or rather: user-friendlier) if mathlink.h did not include windows.h on Windows systems.

Recently I had a very frustrating experience where a C++ library wouldn't work on Windows when used in conjunction with MathLink. The problem turned out to be that the C++ library uses the names IN and OUT internally, but windows.h defines these as macros. It also defines many other macros which have a potential for conflict and difficult to debug situations.

It took quite a while to debug because the code was working fine on OS X / Linux, so at first I thought that the problem was with the Microsoft compiler. Then I realized that it was related to including mathlink.h, but it took some more time before I managed to find the relationship to windows.h and the unexpected IN/OUT macros.

I am not experienced with Windows programming, and it is not clear to me if it is feasible to drop the windows.h dependency from mathlink.h for a future version ... I noticed two places where it was actually needed:

  • For the WinMain function that mprep generates. This is not an issue as the #include <windows.h> can be moved to mprep's output.
  • For the FAR macro. But this has been obsolete for many many years now anyway.

@John Fultz, do you think it would be possible to remove the #include <windows.h> from a future version of mathlink.h/wstp.h? Or are there still-relevant technical reasons to keep it?

Does anyone else see a reason why doing this is not technically feasible?

POSTED BY: Szabolcs Horvát
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