HBP 3.0 rddRegister yields error 9004 in ported Clipper app

[F McKenney]

Stop me if you've heard this one...  I'm attempting to port a customer written in Clipper (plus a few libraries) into Harbour and running into problems.

Background: The customer app, last modified in 1999, currently runs under WinXP and is experiencing intermittent DOS Error 5 hiccups. ( At one point it seemed to be a conflict with an old virus checking program, but that's less certain now. ).  In order to figure out where the problems are coming from I need to make what would normally be a few minor changes; unfortunately -- it's never easy, is it? -- I'm working with uncommented source code recovered from the EXE file and with a limited exposure to Clipper and xBase. Until I can achieve compilable source code that will create a 32-bit equivalent of the original program, I can't make any changes.

At this point I have successfully installed the Harbour Project 3.0 distribution on a fresh new Windows 8 (Gack!) machine.  After some effort (mostly writing "wrapper" functions which convert the truncated function names into the longer names which Harbour recognizes) I have a set of roughly 30 source code files which compile without error. (Yes, I'm painfully aware that that isn't the same as "working". <grin> )

Unfortunately, as soon as the app attempts to issue this call:

   rddRegister("DBFCDX", 1)

the app dies with these messages:

  Unrecoverable error 9004: RDD invalid or failed to load
  Called from RDDREGISTER(0)
  Called from RDDREGISTE(83) in hb_wrap.prg
  Called from MAIN(233) in hb_grant_main.prg

( These messages also get written to the app's error log, so at least some of the code I've ported executes as expected.... okay, as hoped. )

What's frustrating is that the code is blowing up so early on, even before -- as far as I can tell -- any application files are opened.  If the app were dying on, say, the first file read this would make much more sense; I wouldn't necessarily understand the cause, but at least I'd recognize it as some sort of setup problem for the files.

Can anyone offer any suggestions on what sort of Harbour-new-bee error might cause this? (Or even a hint that I might be asking the wrong question; it has happened before. )

For what it's worth, the original Cliper app invoked (at least) these libraries:

  HP Pro printing library
  FlexFile
  FUNCky
  ? something called "Six Driver" ?

I think I've found equivalents for all the functions I recognize as being from the FUNCky library functions, and I'm -- for now -- ignoring the HP  printing. I also realize that, once FraI get past the rddRegister() problem I'll have to figure out how to deal with some other file-access routines:

  v_superrdd("DBFCDX")
  rddregiste("FLEXFILE", 1)
  rddregiste("FXDBF", 255)

but that's for another day.

The HBP file for hbmk2 has the following parameters:

#####
-b
-otest.exe
-request=DBFCDX
-main=Main
-w0
-es2
-rebuild
-lhbnf
-lhbct
# RDD support: try throwing in everything
-lrddbm
-lrddads
-lrddcdx
-lrddfpt
-lrddnsx
-lrddntx
-lrddsql
#####

Suggestions, comments, and even a bit of pointing-out-the-obvious will be appreciated.


Frank McKenney
McKenney Associates

[Francesco Perillo]

Interesting project!

I'd add this line to the source code:
Request dbfcdx

Use harbour from nightly build, 3.0 is quite old.

[F McKenney]

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

"Interesting" is definitely the right word. <grin!>
 

Previously I had a REQUEST DBFCDX statement in the PRG file where the rddRegister() was issued, and the error 9004 still occurred.

I then noticed the 'hbmk2' option   -request=DBFCDX   which -- assuming I'm reading the documentation correctly -- should have the same effect. And it does have the same effect: I see the same error 9004. Sigh.

As for building Harbour Project from source, I found this short 2012 tutorial written by Giovanni Di Maria that makes it look fairly straightforward (famous last words):

  How to build HARBOUR from source in 10 minutes - Tutorial

  http://www.elektrosoft.it/tutorials/how-to-build-harbour-for-windows/how-to-build-harbour-for-windows.asp

I may give it a shot this afternoon.


Frank

[Francesco Perillo]

Have you tried to just remove that line ?

Go here, click on Browse all files, binaries-windows, nightly and download a full version of latest harbour.

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[F McKenney]

On Sunday, April 6, 2014 4:04:35 PM UTC-4, fperillo wrote:

Have you tried to just remove that line ?

Go here, click on Browse all files, binaries-windows, nightly and download a full version of latest harbour.

Wow! That was a quick reply. <grin!>

I removed the -request=DBFCDX parameter from my HBP file and it made no difference that I could see.

I appreciate your effort to point me at a more current binary. Unfortunately, my browser (Firefox) does not appear to be able to display the link from "here". Can you include the link in text form?

Thank you.

Frank

[Qatan]

Link for nightly binary:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/harbour-project/files/binaries-windows/nightly/harbour-nightly-win.exe/download

[F McKenney]

Qatan,

Thank you for joining in.

On Sunday, April 6, 2014 5:15:33 PM UTC-4, Qatan wrote:

Link for nightly binary:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/harbour-project/files/binaries-windows/nightly/harbour-nightly-win.exe/download

I was able to download and install this without difficulty. ( It helped that I remembered to update the PATH setting to point to c:\hb32\bin. )

The good news is that the "nightly build" version works at least as well as the hb30 version, and might even be a bit faster.

The bad news is that my error -- other than the line numbers -- is unchanged:

  Unrecoverable error 9004: RDD invalid or failed to load
  Called from RDDREGISTER(0)
  Called from RDDREGISTE(83) in hb_wrap.prg

  Called from MAIN(255) in hb_grant_main.prg

Adding -request=DBFCDX to the HBP file or removing it made no difference.
 
Adding REQUEST DBFCDX to the PRG file or removing it made no difference.
 
Adding  #include dbinfo.ch  to the PRG file made no difference.

It feels as though I'm missing something extremely simple and obvious. I just have no clue as to what it might be: installing in c:\hb32, running 64-bit Win8-Home, forgetting to sacrifice a chicken at the full moon..

Even worse, it will shortly be Monday. Sigh.

I need to take a break think about this a bit more.

Thanks for all the help, everyone.


Frank

[elch]

Hi Frank,

Even worse, it will shortly be Monday. Sigh.

Mondays are good days to fix such ;-)

RDDregister() is used by developers, who *create* new <R>eplaceable <D>atabase <D>river --- complex guru area.

A guess: you just want to set the default driver ?

Therefor e.g. RDDSETDEFAULT( "DBFCDX" ) is used.

This '-request=xyz' is a linker switch:

which RDD(s) should be linked to your executable, so that it later can be used e.g. for the DbUseArea() function -- see second parameter:

http://x-hacker.org/ng/53guide/ng3575a.html

HTH, regards

Rolf

[Francesco Perillo]

Remove rddregister line....