Error building pch file with CPP definitions

Question

We're adding CoreData support to our iPhone app. It's a far reaching change (moving from SQLitePersistentObject). To avoid branching, we are running a single codeline with the new code within #ifdef blocks.

When I enable this code from one of my headers (#define CORE_DATA_BUILD) everything works fine. When I create a new target and define my preprocessor macro there, I get errors in the system headers. Specifically; CFBag.h, CFArray.h, CFBinaryHeap.h, CFDictionary.h and CFSet.h all fail to compile.

The error is:

expected ';', ',' or ')' before '>' token

I created my new target by copying my existing app target and then adding CORE_DATA_BUILD to the C Pre-processor definitions section of GCC-4.2 - Preprocessing.

I'm pretty sure the pre-processor definition is set up and my macro name doesn't clash with any Apple symbols. The error also manifests when I add my define to "Preprocessor Macros Not Used In Precompiled Headers". I have cleaned the build and removed the precompiled headers but I still get the error.

Invocation and error output from Xcode is:

ProcessPCH /var/folders/Ay/AyBvIizJERGjIMkWxjcIfU+++TI/-Caches-/com.apple.Xcode.501/SharedPrecompiledHeaders/UIKit-fzghyhumbyslqcedmtegbkgafwpy/UIKit.h.gch /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator3.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/UIKit.framework/Headers/UIKit.h normal i386 objective-c com.apple.compilers.gcc.4_2
    cd /Users/rog/Development/Groove
    setenv PATH "/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/usr/bin:/Developer/usr/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin"
    /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/usr/bin/gcc-4.2 -x objective-c-header -arch i386 -fmessage-length=0 -pipe -std=c99 -Wno-trigraphs -fpascal-strings -fasm-blocks -O0 -Werror -Wreturn-type -Wunused-variable -DCOREDATA -D<Multiple -Dvalues> -D__IPHONE_OS_VERSION_MIN_REQUIRED=30000 -isysroot /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator3.0.sdk -fvisibility=hidden -mmacosx-version-min=10.5 -gdwarf-2 -iquote /Users/rog/Development/Groove/build/Groove.build/Debug-iphonesimulator/Tests.build/Tests-generated-files.hmap -I/Users/rog/Development/Groove/build/Groove.build/Debug-iphonesimulator/Tests.build/Tests-own-target-headers.hmap -I/Users/rog/Development/Groove/build/Groove.build/Debug-iphonesimulator/Tests.build/Tests-all-target-headers.hmap -iquote /Users/rog/Development/Groove/build/Groove.build/Debug-iphonesimulator/Tests.build/Tests-project-headers.hmap -F/Users/rog/Development/Groove/build/Debug-iphonesimulator -F/Users/rog/Development/Groove -I/Users/rog/Development/Groove/build/Debug-iphonesimulator/include -I/Users/rog/Development/Groove/build/Groove.build/Debug-iphonesimulator/Tests.build/DerivedSources/i386 -I/Users/rog/Development/Groove/build/Groove.build/Debug-iphonesimulator/Tests.build/DerivedSources -c /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator3.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/UIKit.framework/Headers/UIKit.h -o /var/folders/Ay/AyBvIizJERGjIMkWxjcIfU+++TI/-Caches-/com.apple.Xcode.501/SharedPrecompiledHeaders/UIKit-fzghyhumbyslqcedmtegbkgafwpy/UIKit.h.gch
<command-line>: error: macro names must be identifiers
<command-line>: error: ISO C99 requires whitespace after the macro name
In file included from /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator3.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Headers/CoreFoundation.h:39,
                 from /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator3.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/Foundation.framework/Headers/Foundation.h:6,
                 from /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator3.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/UIKit.framework/Headers/UIAccelerometer.h:8,
                 from /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator3.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/UIKit.framework/Headers/UIKit.h:9:
/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator3.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Headers/CFArray.h:173: error: expected ';', ',' or ')' before '>' token
/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator3.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Headers/CFArray.h:359: error: expected ';', ',' or ')' before '>' token
In file included from /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator3.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Headers/CoreFoundation.h:40,
etc...

My Prefix.pch file is standard:

//
// Prefix header for all source files of the 'Groove' target in the 'Groove' project
//

#ifdef __OBJC__
    #import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
    #import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
#endif

Any idea what's going wrong?

Answer 1

    -D<Multiple -Dvalues> 
<command-line>: error: macro names must be identifiers
<command-line>: error: ISO C99 requires whitespace after the macro name

It looks like at some point you edited All Configurations of the Preprocessor Macros build setting of your project or target. Different configurations had different values. Rather than pressing Cancel or replacing them uniformly, you somehow confirmed the placeholder text .

Xcode is dutifully passing "<Multiple" and "Values>" as preprocessor definitions, instead of the preprocessor definitions you want.

Go to the target inspector Build tab, find Preprocessor Macros, delete its current value, and replace it with the value you really want.

Answer 2

Please post the invocation line of the compiler, not just the error; it tells us infinitely more. The error you cited is typical when an upstream error confuses the compiler when it's #importing downstream header files; it obviously doesn't mean there are errors in CFBag.h et al.

My suspicion is that when you created a different target, you got a different Prefix Header File for that target, and it's not set up correctly; compare the Prefix Header File build settings for the old and new targets, and compare the files themselves.

One common error is to include Objective-C header files from a C++ project. That doesn't work; you need to turn your .cpp files into .mm files if you want to intermix Objective-C and C++. But C++ should be able to #include CoreFoundation header files.

Answer 3

Bit of a stab in the dark here - are you generating a precompiled header file? Have you rebuilt the precompiled header file since you changed the preprocessor symbol? You may be seeing a difference in the symbol as built into the precompiled header, and the symbol as seen in the other compilation units.