Question

I am writing a (my first) C++ class on top of some code written in C, but I can only get the C++ to compile by declaring the C functions in a extern block. My project uses autotools; is there any way to automate this process so I don’t have to maintain two header files?

Answer 1

Yes create wrapper header files which include your C header files like so…

//Wrapper.h #ifdef __cplusplus extern 'C' {      #include 'Actual.h' } #else     #include 'Actual.h' #endif   //Use.cpp #include 'Wrapper.h'  int main() {     return 0; }  //Use.c #include 'Wrapper.h' /*or #include 'Actual.h' */  int main() {     return 0; }