Question

I’m attempting to wrap libpq for a program, and part of the FFI tool I’m using attempts to get sizeof() any struct in use. In this case the issue is that trying to get sizeof(PGconn) results in a bunch of errors from GCC because it is an incomplete type. Is there a way to get the same data, or do I need to train to this FFI tool to ignore types that are intended to be opaque? For reference here is the generated C code, and the compiler errors:

/* Define on Darwin to activate all library features */
#define _DARWIN_C_SOURCE 1
/* This must be set to 64 on some systems to enable large file support. */
#define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
/* Define on Linux to activate all library features */
#define _GNU_SOURCE 1
/* This must be defined on some systems to enable large file support. */
#define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
/* Define on NetBSD to activate all library features */
#define _NETBSD_SOURCE 1
/* Define to activate features from IEEE Stds 1003.1-2001 */
#define _POSIX_C_SOURCE 200112L
/* Define on FreeBSD to activate all library features */
#define __BSD_VISIBLE 1
#define __XSI_VISIBLE 700
/* Windows: winsock/winsock2 mess */
#define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN

#include <libpq-fe.h>

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stddef.h>   /* for offsetof() */

void dump(char* key, int value) {
    printf("%s: %d\n", key, value);
}


void dump_section_PGconn(void) {
    typedef PGconn platcheck_t;
    typedef struct {
        char c;
        platcheck_t s;
    } platcheck2_t;

    platcheck_t s;
    dump("align", offsetof(platcheck2_t, s));
    dump("size",  sizeof(platcheck_t));
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    printf("-+- PGconn\n");
    dump_section_PGconn();
    printf("---\n");
    return 0;
}

And the errors:

[platform:execute] gcc -c -O3 -pthread -fomit-frame-pointer -Wall -Wno-unused -I/usr/include/postgresql/ /tmp/usession-default-52/platcheck_10.c -o /tmp/usession-default-52/platcheck_10.o
[platform:Error] /tmp/usession-default-52/platcheck_10.c: In function ‘dump_section_PGconn’:
[platform:Error] /tmp/usession-default-52/platcheck_10.c:34: error: field ‘s’ has incomplete type
[platform:Error] /tmp/usession-default-52/platcheck_10.c:37: error: storage size of ‘s’ isn’t known
[platform:Error] /tmp/usession-default-52/platcheck_10.c:39: error: invalid application of ‘sizeof’ to incomplete type ‘platcheck_t’

Answer 1

PGConn is opaque by design. If you need to look into it, include libpq-int.h (for “internal”). But consider reconsidering your requirements instead.