Customizing system settings with defines?

Question

I have written a library that contains a statically allocated buffer (f.g. struct taskList proc[TBL_SIZE];)

TBL_SIZE is a macro currently defined in my .h file.

I have heard that there's a way to set or reset the define statement inside the .ino file to customize this setting for some libraries, but I don't know how to do this myself, and by the time I realized that this was a problem I had forgotten what library allowed this setting.

This would be extremely useful as currently I have to edit my library every time I build a new project (or worse, am working on several at once with different settings).

My guess was a variant on an include guard, like this

#ifndef TBL_SIZE
#define TBL_SIZE 16 /*(or whatever)*/
#endif

block, but that failed to work. I tried it during a final project, so my memory is fuzzy from lack of sleep (and time, now), but I'm fairly sure I got an "undefined" error.

I don't know what this is called to search for it otherwise, so I'm hoping someone can help.

---

Here is more information about my specific issue:

In my .h (at the top, after the regular include guard):

#ifndef TBL_SIZE
#define TBL_SIZE 16
#endif

(Note that everything works if I just set this directly without the defines)

Further down the .h, inside my class:

struct task processes[TBL_SIZE];

In the main .ino file before the library includes:

#define TBL_SIZE 6
#include <CoRTOS.h>

---

Debug output of the build (I know from experience it built with 16 instead of 6 entries in that table from the memory size. The low memory warning is another big clue.)

Linking everything together...
"C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Arduino15\\packages\\arduino\\tools\\avr-gcc\\7.3.0-atmel3.6.1-arduino7/bin/avr-gcc" -w -Os -g -flto -fuse-linker-plugin -Wl,--gc-sections -mmcu=atmega328p -o "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761/ECE554_ASP.ino.elf" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761\\sketch\\ECE554_ASP.ino.cpp.o" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761\\libraries\\CoRTOS\\CoRTOS.cpp.o" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761\\libraries\\Adafruit_GFX_Library\\glcdfont.c.o" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761\\libraries\\Adafruit_GFX_Library\\Adafruit_GFX.cpp.o" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761\\libraries\\Adafruit_GFX_Library\\Adafruit_GrayOLED.cpp.o" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761\\libraries\\Adafruit_GFX_Library\\Adafruit_SPITFT.cpp.o" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761\\libraries\\Adafruit_BusIO\\Adafruit_BusIO_Register.cpp.o" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761\\libraries\\Adafruit_BusIO\\Adafruit_I2CDevice.cpp.o" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761\\libraries\\Adafruit_BusIO\\Adafruit_SPIDevice.cpp.o" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761\\libraries\\Wire\\Wire.cpp.o" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761\\libraries\\Wire\\utility\\twi.c.o" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761\\libraries\\Adafruit_SSD1306\\Adafruit_SSD1306.cpp.o" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761\\libraries\\SPI\\SPI.cpp.o" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761\\libraries\\SparkFun_BME280_Arduino_Library-master\\SparkFunBME280.cpp.o" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761/core\\core.a" "-LC:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761" -lm
C:\Users\rdrag\Documents\Arduino\libraries\CoRTOS\src/CoRTOS.h:38:7: note: array types have different bounds
 class cortos_class {
       ^
"C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Arduino15\\packages\\arduino\\tools\\avr-gcc\\7.3.0-atmel3.6.1-arduino7/bin/avr-objcopy" -O ihex -j .eeprom --set-section-flags=.eeprom=alloc,load --no-change-warnings --change-section-lma .eeprom=0 "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761/ECE554_ASP.ino.elf" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761/ECE554_ASP.ino.eep"
"C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Arduino15\\packages\\arduino\\tools\\avr-gcc\\7.3.0-atmel3.6.1-arduino7/bin/avr-objcopy" -O ihex -R .eeprom "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761/ECE554_ASP.ino.elf" "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761/ECE554_ASP.ino.hex"
Multiple libraries were found for "Adafruit_GFX.h"
 Used: C:\Users\rdrag\Documents\Arduino\libraries\Adafruit_GFX_Library
 Not used: C:\Users\rdrag\Documents\Arduino\libraries\Adafruit-GFX-Library-master
Multiple libraries were found for "Adafruit_I2CDevice.h"
 Used: C:\Users\rdrag\Documents\Arduino\libraries\Adafruit_BusIO
 Not used: C:\Users\rdrag\Documents\Arduino\libraries\Adafruit_BusIO-master
Multiple libraries were found for "Adafruit_SSD1306.h"
 Used: C:\Users\rdrag\Documents\Arduino\libraries\Adafruit_SSD1306
 Not used: C:\Users\rdrag\Documents\Arduino\libraries\Adafruit_SSD1306-master
Using library CoRTOS at version 0.2.0 in folder: C:\Users\rdrag\Documents\Arduino\libraries\CoRTOS
Using library Adafruit_GFX_Library at version 1.10.7 in folder: C:\Users\rdrag\Documents\Arduino\libraries\Adafruit_GFX_Library
Using library Adafruit_BusIO at version 1.7.3 in folder: C:\Users\rdrag\Documents\Arduino\libraries\Adafruit_BusIO
Using library Wire at version 1.0 in folder: C:\Users\rdrag\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\arduino\hardware\avr\1.8.3\libraries\Wire
Using library Adafruit_SSD1306 at version 2.4.5 in folder: C:\Users\rdrag\Documents\Arduino\libraries\Adafruit_SSD1306
Using library SPI at version 1.0 in folder: C:\Users\rdrag\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\arduino\hardware\avr\1.8.3\libraries\SPI
Using library SparkFun_BME280_Arduino_Library-master at version 2.0.9 in folder: C:\Users\rdrag\Documents\Arduino\libraries\SparkFun_BME280_Arduino_Library-master
"C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Arduino15\\packages\\arduino\\tools\\avr-gcc\\7.3.0-atmel3.6.1-arduino7/bin/avr-size" -A "C:\\Users\\rdrag\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\arduino_build_258761/ECE554_ASP.ino.elf"
Sketch uses 28172 bytes (91%) of program storage space. Maximum is 30720 bytes.
Global variables use 1609 bytes (78%) of dynamic memory, leaving 439 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 2048 bytes.
Low memory available, stability problems may occur.

Answer 1

I have heard that there's a way to set or reset the define statement inside the .ino file to customize this setting for some libraries, but I don't know how to do this myself

There are many ways to achieve what you want, you might not even need the #ifndef macro, use your library class construct to allow user to pass in the list size as an argument and but set the argument with a default value.

YourLibrary.h

class YourLibrary
{
private:
  size_t _userSize;
public:
  YourLibrary::YourLibrary(size_t listSize = 16) {
    _userSize = listSize;
  }
  ...
}

User's sketch .ino

#include <YourLibrary.h>

#define LIST_SIZE 32;

YourLibrary instance(LIST_SIZE);  // instance() would set the _listSize to 16

setup() {

}

loop() {

}