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Hi. Hopefully this is the right list for this question!

I am writing an extension for Ruby in C, and I need to determine
the endianness of the machine and set a flag when I compile. What is
the best way to go about this? I've seen examples of determining
endianness but I don't know how to set the flag in extconf.rb

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

--Aaron

Aaron Patterson wrote:
> Hi. Hopefully this is the right list for this question!
>
> I am writing an extension for Ruby in C, and I need to determine
> the endianness of the machine and set a flag when I compile. What is
> the best way to go about this? I've seen examples of determining
> endianness but I don't know how to set the flag in extconf.rb
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
>
> --Aaron
>
>

Modify $CFLAGS or $CPPFLAGS directly:

# extconf.rb
if [1].pack("I") == [1].pack("N")
$CFLAGS += " -DBIG_ENDIAN" # note the leading space
end

/* In your C code somewhere */
#ifdef BIG_ENDIAN
/* Do something */
#endif

Regards,

Dan

On Tue, Dec 06, 2005 at 04:21:37AM +0900, Daniel Berger wrote:

[snip]

> Modify $CFLAGS or $CPPFLAGS directly:
>
> # extconf.rb
> if [1].pack("I") == [1].pack("N")
> $CFLAGS += " -DBIG_ENDIAN" # note the leading space
> end
>
> /* In your C code somewhere */
> #ifdef BIG_ENDIAN
> /* Do something */
> #endif
>
> Regards,
>
> Dan
>

Thank you for the help!

--Aaron

Hi,

At Tue, 6 Dec 2005 04:21:37 +0900,
Daniel Berger wrote in [ruby-talk:168948]:
> # extconf.rb
> if [1].pack("I") == [1].pack("N")
> $CFLAGS += " -DBIG_ENDIAN" # note the leading space
> end

It tells the endian of the running platform, but not of the
target platform. They can differ when cross-compiling.

Since config.h defines WORDS_BIGENDIAN for big-endian
platforms, you don't have to test it in extconf.rb.

--
Nobu Nakada

On Tue, Dec 06, 2005 at 02:00:33PM +0900, nobuyoshi nakada wrote:
[snip]
>
> Since config.h defines WORDS_BIGENDIAN for big-endian
> platforms, you don't have to test it in extconf.rb.
>
> --
> Nobu Nakada

I guess I don't understand how I am supposed to set up my build
environment.... As far as I can tell, config.h is generated while
building Ruby from source. The only config.h on my system is:

/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/i386-linux/config.h

Which does not have WORDS_BIGENDIAN listed in it. I did find
WORDS_BIGENDIAN in /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/i386-linux/defines.h but it just
says to look at __BIG_ENDIAN__.

Can you point me to a small project that I can model my build after, or
an example exconf.rb?

Thanks for the help!

--Aaron

On Wed, 2005-12-07 at 07:22 +0900, Aaron Patterson wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 06, 2005 at 02:00:33PM +0900, nobuyoshi nakada wrote:
> [snip]
> >
> > Since config.h defines WORDS_BIGENDIAN for big-endian
> > platforms, you don't have to test it in extconf.rb.
> >
> > --
> > Nobu Nakada
>
> I guess I don't understand how I am supposed to set up my build
> environment.... As far as I can tell, config.h is generated while
> building Ruby from source. The only config.h on my system is:
>
> /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/i386-linux/config.h
>
> Which does not have WORDS_BIGENDIAN listed in it. I did find
> WORDS_BIGENDIAN in /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/i386-linux/defines.h but it just
> says to look at __BIG_ENDIAN__.

That's because you are on Intel, which is little endian.

> Can you point me to a small project that I can model my build after, or
> an example exconf.rb?

What he is saying is that you should not modify your extconf.rb file. In
your C code, just do:

#ifdef WORDS_BIGENDIAN
// Big endian code
#else
// Little endian code
#endif

Guillaume.

>
> Thanks for the help!
>
> --Aaron
>
>