Create a type alias for bindgen

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1

This is a follow-up to this question: Use existing bindings from a *-sys crate with bindgen

I have a *-sys crate that depends on the system library glib. I found that bindings to items from glib already exist in the glib-sys crate. Currently, my *-sys crate re-generates those bindings. However, I want to use the ones that already exist under glib-sys.

To do this, I blocklisted glib's types in my build.rs:

let bindings = bindgen::Builder::default()
    // ...
    .blocklist_type(r"(?i)_?G\w+")

However, if bindgen does not generate these, the crate fails to build as it cannot find those types. I want to instruct bindgen that they do in fact exist under glib-sys. I was advised to do this using type aliases, but I can't find any way to do so.

2

Did adding a type alias in the crate (in another file) next to the generated bindings not work?

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3

How are you using the resulting generated file? If they are include!d somewhere, then any type at the same level as the include will be seen inside the included code.

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4

I'm now trying to generate the bindings this way:

let bindings = bindgen::Builder::default()
    // ...
    .allowlist_var("Playerctl_.*")
    .allowlist_type("Playerctl_.*")
    .allowlist_function("playerctl_.*")
    .blocklist_type(r"(?i)\b_?G\w+")
    // ...

I also created a new file types.rs which I include alongside bindings.rs. However, one of the types that I have to define in types.rs requires __BindgenBitfieldUnit, which isn't provided by glib_sys. I get the following error when trying to build:

error[E0412]: cannot find type `__BindgenBitfieldUnit` in this scope
  --> src/types.rs:28:22
   |
28 |     pub _bitfield_1: __BindgenBitfieldUnit<[u8; 4]>,
   |                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ not found in this scope

If I remove the call to blocklist_type, this struct still generates. I'm confused about this struct-- it doesn't match the pattern (?i)\b_?G\w+, so I don't know why it isn't generating. I tried

  • adding a line .allowlist_type("__BindgenBitfieldUnit") and
  • modifying .allowlist_type("Playerctl_.*") to .allowlist_type("Playerctl_.*|__BindgenBitfieldUnit"),

but neither of these result in the struct being generated.

5

To find what I was missing, I removed the calls to allowlist_*, blocklist_type, and the include!("types.rs"). This generated the full bindings.rs along with all of the types from glib-sys. I copied the structs I was missing from that file and placed them in my types.rs. Now, the crate has everything it needs to build!

1 Like
6

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