------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Compilation Notes: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- gcc or LLVM clang is required for compiling Mednafen. Intel's C compiler may work, but is untested. Probably doesn't need to be said, but the compilers optionally specified via CC and CXX *must* be the same version. clang: 3.5.0 or newer is required, though gcc 4.9.x is preferable for performance reasons. gcc: 4.8(4.8.4+), or 4.9(4.9.2+) or newer is required. gcc 4.9 is recommended; gcc 5.x and gcc 6.x tend to produce slower executables, at least with Mednafen on x86_64. Reportedly, passing: --build=x86_64-apple-darwin`uname -r` to the configure script is necessary for building on Mac OS X to work. Compiling at -O3 or higher, or with other custom optimization flags, is discouraged, due to the higher probability of triggering a compiler bug that generates wrong machine code. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Code contributions: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To keep things simpler for potential commercial licensing of parts of Mednafen, any patches or new code offered for the following emulation modules, or their dependencies(e.g. M68K emulator), will be ignored: apple2 pce pcfx psx snes_faust ss Additionally, any contributions to core Mednafen functionality with code that is not self-contained(e.g. support for a new CD image format), will also be ignored. Distributing a separate patch set or an outright fork, with branding that clearly conveys the forkiness, is recommended in the aforementioned cases. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some notes(and reminders) on the source code: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check "mednafen/src/types.h" for standard C and C++ library header includes, and avoid #include'ing the same files redundantly elsewhere. Avoid %= in save state load variable sanitizing code unless the variable is unsigned. malloc(), realloc(), calloc()'ing 0 bytes of memory may return a NULL pointer. memcpy()/memmove()/etc. with NULL pointers is undefined and bad even when length is 0. Take care not to do something like: void somefunc(int something[16]); [...] sizeof(something) Try to avoid writing new code that violates strict overflow, even though we compile with -fwrapv. Especially be mindful of stuff like what's described at http://kqueue.org/blog/2013/09/17/cltq/ Order of operations != Operator precedence. Remember sequence point rules, and don't do stuff like: // BAD BAD value = FuncWithSideEffects() | (FuncWithSideEffects() << 8); Refer to: http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/eval_order Avoid writing new code that shifts left signed integers or negative values to avoid technically undefined behavior; use ugly typecasting, or multiply by powers of 2 instead(remotely modern compilers can optimize it to a shift internally). Vanishing temporaries: https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Temporaries.html#Temporaries Do not place a period before the field width for "s" and "[" conversion specifiers in *scanf() format strings; perhaps a bad habit picked up long ago from working with a buggy libc or trio? Avoid compiling different C++ files with different compiler flags in regards to instruction set used(like -mmmx, -msse, -mfpmath, -march), or else there may be (template-)function ODR violations that could cause compatibility problems. GPLv3-incompatible code: WonderSwan emulation code from Cygne. QuickLZ(old version used) Don't do greater-than and less-than comparisons between pointers unless they're pointers to members of the same array/struct/etc. Avoid using a pointer into a nested array of a multidimensional array to access elements of the multidimensional array that lie outside of that specific nested array, as such behavior is probably undefined. Pointer provenance, DR260. Don't create temporarily-invalid pointers via careless pointer math; restructure the expressions if possible, or utilize uintptr_t instead. x86_64 inline assembly, stack red zone. https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gccint/Memory-model.html#Memory-model Don't use memcmp() on class/struct objects unless they're initialized with memset() and copied around with only memcpy()(or equivalent). Don't rely on malloc(), realloc(), and calloc() setting errno to ENOMEM on a memory allocation error.