Problem with visibility of namespace level constants and methodslar

Elements Oxygene
1

I am having a weird problem with namespace level constants and methods compiled into a library. The attached projects exhibit my trouble.

mylibrary/resources.pas declares a record type, a constant, and two methods, all at namespace level (i.e. not inside a class). They are all visible to the program when its project includes resources.pas directly (see myproblem_good) .

But when referencing resources.pas compiled into a library, the record type is visible, but not the constant (see myproblem_bad2) or the methods (see myproblem_bad1).

Prepending public to the constant or method declarations in resources.pas prevents the library from being built at all.

Problem.zip (8.7 KB)

2

That is as designed. the default visibility for globals is “assembly”, unless they are marked as public. There’s also a global switch in Projects Settings for legal compatibility to treat all globals as public by default.

Can you give me a simple test case that show this error?

thanx,
marc

3

Setting DefaultGlobalsToPublic to True in the library project solved my problem nicely.

Attached are projects illustrating that public const and public function globals don’t compile.

Problem2.zip (8.0 KB)

4

Ah yes. this is not C# ;). the proper syntax is

  function GetDesignator1(prompt : String) : Designator; public;

and not

  public function GetDesignator1(prompt : String) : Designator;

:slight_smile:

5

I got caught by the Principle of Least Surprise. We do public class and public record so I expected public const and public function.

6

Good point, that is a bit inconsistent indeed – but in line with other directives (say abstract) on classes vs methods :slight_smile: