passing function pointer to the C code using cgo

Question

Starting from Go v1.6 cgo changed the rules of passing pointers to the C code golang/go#12416. The example of invoking a dynamic Go callback from C code from the wiki doesn\'t

Answer 1

It depends exactly what you need to do with the callback function - but a trick that might work is to not pass the Go function, but a pointer to a struct with the function on it that you want.

For example:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "unsafe"
)

/*
extern void go_callback_int(void*, int);
static inline void CallMyFunction(void* pfoo) {
    go_callback_int(pfoo, 5);
}
*/
import "C"

//export go_callback_int
func go_callback_int(pfoo unsafe.Pointer, p1 C.int) {
    foo := (*Test)(pfoo)
    foo.cb(p1)
}

type Test struct {
}

func (s *Test) cb(x C.int) {
    fmt.Println("callback with", x)
}

func main() {
    data := &Test{}
    C.CallMyFunction(unsafe.Pointer(&data))
}

Another option might be to use a global variable as you had in your example, and then forgo passing anything useful in the pointer to C.

Like this:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "unsafe"
)

/*
extern void go_callback_int(void*, int);
static inline void CallMyFunction(void* pfoo) {
    go_callback_int(pfoo, 5);
}
*/
import "C"

//export go_callback_int
func go_callback_int(_ unsafe.Pointer, p1 C.int) {
    MyCallbackFunc(p1)
}

func MyCallback(x C.int) {
    fmt.Println("callback with", x)
}

// we store it in a global variable so that the garbage collector
// doesn't clean up the memory for any temporary variables created.
var MyCallbackFunc = MyCallback

func main() {
    C.CallMyFunction(nil)
}

It possibly depends on what your C callback needs to do.

If neither of these work it might be possible to do some tricks with channels to send the value you need (and keep it in scope).