Building the latest LibFFI for Windows

[Bas Groothedde]

Hi there list!

First of all, I hope that this list is still active. I'm trying to learn
more about the libffi source in the hopes of utilising it and hopefully
contributing to this project.

I encountered a problem with libffi-3.2.1, build with msvc 2017 in
cygwin from source (sourceware.org:/pub/libffi/libffi-3.2.1.tar.gz [1]).
With a little tweaking in the build script I managed to get a nice
static x86 and x64 library build of libffi. Wonderful!

I was then happily using the library until I encountered that on x86
Windows, the stdcall ABI in closures are a bit grumpy. Using the ABI in
callbacks for Windows API calls, like EnumChildWindows, crashes the
program and raises a 'Stack overflow' exception.

This is a massive problem for me, as one of the biggest reasons I'm
using libffi is to support API access from a scripting language. I have
seen many reports on this issue, and many possible fixes, however none
of the fixes I encountered seemed to work in the 3.2.1 sources I
downloaded.

If anyone has a fix for that version, I'd love to have it; as it
successfully builds with msvc on x86 and x64 platforms.

The next thing I tried in my desperate quest for a solution is to fetch
the latest version of the libffi source of GitHub, and try to compile
that with my cygwin / msvc setup. (I need the Windows build to be a
static library produced by msvc) - however to my surprise the x64 build
went very well, but the x86 build yields an 'platform not supported'
error. Is there any way I can still build with msvc for x86, or am I
lost completely here? Building with mingw or gcc causes issues in the
software the library is going to be linked in, due to the fact a newer
standard library is linked (which is not available in that software).

Thanks for your time, and hopefully someone will understand what my
rambling is about.

Cheers!
Bas

[Anthony Green]

Hi Bas,

My suggestion is to only work with the git sources right now.
32-bit builds with the MS tools should still work. Could you open a
issue on github with the console output of that build attempt? I may
also need to see config.log if it was created.

Thanks!

AG

Post by Bas Groothedde
Hi there list!
First of all, I hope that this list is still active. I'm trying to learn
more about the libffi source in the hopes of utilising it and hopefully
contributing to this project.
I encountered a problem with libffi-3.2.1, build with msvc 2017 in
cygwin from source (sourceware.org:/pub/libffi/libffi-3.2.1.tar.gz [1]).
With a little tweaking in the build script I managed to get a nice
static x86 and x64 library build of libffi. Wonderful!
I was then happily using the library until I encountered that on x86
Windows, the stdcall ABI in closures are a bit grumpy. Using the ABI in
callbacks for Windows API calls, like EnumChildWindows, crashes the
program and raises a 'Stack overflow' exception.
This is a massive problem for me, as one of the biggest reasons I'm
using libffi is to support API access from a scripting language. I have
seen many reports on this issue, and many possible fixes, however none
of the fixes I encountered seemed to work in the 3.2.1 sources I
downloaded.
If anyone has a fix for that version, I'd love to have it; as it
successfully builds with msvc on x86 and x64 platforms.
The next thing I tried in my desperate quest for a solution is to fetch
the latest version of the libffi source of GitHub, and try to compile
that with my cygwin / msvc setup. (I need the Windows build to be a
static library produced by msvc) - however to my surprise the x64 build
went very well, but the x86 build yields an 'platform not supported'
error. Is there any way I can still build with msvc for x86, or am I
lost completely here? Building with mingw or gcc causes issues in the
software the library is going to be linked in, due to the fact a newer
standard library is linked (which is not available in that software).
Thanks for your time, and hopefully someone will understand what my
rambling is about.
Cheers!
Bas
--
-------------------------
Bas Groothedde
Imagine Programming
------
[1] ftp://sourceware.org/pub/libffi/libffi-3.2.1.tar.gz