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I like the built-in namespacing ca65 provides through .SCOPE/.ENDSCOPE and am hoping to use it in my project. It works fine when I put all of my code in a single file, but when I start to break the code out into separate files, I find I'm unable to make the scopes available other files via the usual mechanisms (.IMPORT, .EXPORT). Has anyone had any luck exporting/importing their scopes?

.import and .export are for passing actual labels around (i.e. something that can be assigned a value), not scopes.

If you want to import/export something that's inside a scope: Edit: replaced non-working example: .export scoped::thing

I don't think there's any kind of mechanism to import/export all symbols in a scope.

You could make a "header" file like C and use .global for all the symbols within a scope that should be public.
Edit: duplicate scope error seems to prevent the ability to use .global for scoped exports.

rainwarrior wrote:If you want to import/export something that's inside a scope:

Code: Select all

.export scoped::thing

I don't think there's any kind of mechanism to import/export all symbols in a scope.

There's an open feature request for something similar to .import scoped::*.

rainwarrior wrote:

Code: Select all

.export scoped::thing

I've never been able to get that to work. I've resorted to doing hacks like this:
Otherwise I get errors.

Ah apologies, was going by my fallible memory. (Haven't actually done it in a while.)

You can put the .export within the .scope, and on the .import side you can do the same.

Unfortunately this seems to preclude the use of .global for this, because they assembler has a "duplicate scope" error for some reason.

Scopes in ca65 are pretty cool, but there are several gotchas that prevent them from being as useful as they initially appear to be. To avoid these problems, I currently use scopes only to delimit labels, and if any scoped labels need access from the outside, I create global aliases for them.