fixes.inc

Community patches for buggy SA:MP functions.

Introduction

SA:MP is beta software written by a small team in their spare time, thus it has bugs (as does all software). Some of these have been known for a long time but are low priority due to their minor effects, others go undiscovered for a long time. Many of these bugs have solutions which can be implemented in PAWN (and this may be simpler than implementing them in the SA:MP source code). This include aims to collect fixes for as many of these bugs as possible from the community (i.e. anyone who has a fix) together in to one easy to use place for everyone's benefit.

Use

To use this, simply include it after the default SA:MP functions, but before third party includes:

#include <a_samp> 
// Any default re-definitions should go here. 
//#undef MAX_PLAYERS 
//#define MAX_PLAYERS 10 
#include <fixes> 
#include <other> 

To disable any fix for whatever reason simply do:

#define FIX_<name> 0

For example, to disable all the file.inc fixes if you always correctly check the file handle, do:

#include <a_samp> 
#define FIX_file_inc 0 
#include <fixes> 
#include <other> 

All the names of the fixes are single words, and are all listed with their fix descriptions below.

If you only have one script running on your server (i.e. no FilterScripts), you can use this define to improve the fixes.inc code:

#include <a_samp> 
#define FIXES_Single 1 
#include <fixes> 
#include <other> 

Fixes

Options

There are a few options for improved execution of this script. Define these symbols as 1 before you include fixes.inc (remove them or set them to 0 to disable them):

• FIXES_Single: You only have one script running (no filterscripts), simplify the code.
• FIXES_SilentKick: When a player is kicked for illegal mods/vehicles, don't send them a message.
• FIXES_Debug: Additional information in the server console.

A few fixes are disabled by default, to enable them all do:

#define GetPlayerDialog 1 
#define file_inc 1 
#define random 1 
#define HideMenuForPlayer_2 1 
#define GameTextStyles 1 
#define GetPlayerWeather 1 
#define GetWeather 1 
#define GetWorldTime 1 

Or more simply (and future-proof-ly):

#define FIXES_EnableAll 
#define FIXES_EnableDeprecated 

Expansion

The file is fairly well documented, with a list of the currently (hopefully) fixed bugs at the top. If you know of others, or have solutions for others, it would be greatly appreciated if you could post them as issues on this repository. The fixes also need extensive testing to find bugs in the fixes themselves.

Again, this is a community project, merely managed by Y_Less and others - if anyone has comments, contributions, criticisms etc. please again post them as issues on the repository. This includes additions to source code, documentation, presentation, translations (mainly of this documentation - multiple versions of the include should be avoided to reduce fragmentation), or any other related area you can think of.

Other Fixes

There are a few other includes which aim to fix issues too large to be included here:

• Timerfix - udan11 (Dan..) 's fixes to make "SetTimer" and "SetTimerEx" vastly more accurate in their delays.
• SQLitei - Slice 's fixes and improvements for many SQLite functions.

Bugs

Originally Posted by Y_Less :

[This] is beta software written by a small team in their spare time, thus it has bugs (as does all software). This software is explicitly designed to solve bugs, not cause them, but there may still be bugs.

The most likely cause of bugs is certain combinations of disabled fixes. Some fixes are inter-mixed and while they SHOULD work when the fixes they are combined with are disabled, not every combination has been tested. There are literally billions of possible combinations - if you find one that doesn't compile or work, please tell us.

Style Rules

• All globals should be static stock whenever possible (so they can only be accessed from this one file).
• Statics must start with FIXES_gs, and all other globals with FIXES_g.
• All functions not overriding existing functions must start with FIXES_.
• Macros must be upper case, use underscores, and start FIXES_: FIXES_LIKE_THIS.
• Functions should be upper camel case (as the original functions are) FIXES_LikeThis.
• Globals (after the prefix) should be upper camel case LikeThis, and locals lower camel case likeThis.
• ALS should be used to hook functions and callbacks. See this topic for more details: http://forum.sa-mp.com/showthread.php?t=570910
• The ALS prefix for chaining is FIXES_.
• When redefining a native, add a BAD_ external name declaration with the _ALS_ definition so that others may use the original native if they so desire (with the caveat that it may break all fixes). Note the BAD_ name is meant to indicate the possibility of breaking the fix, not a comment on the original native function.
• The ALS hook defines used here are a little different to the normal ones as this file assumes that it is always first. The pattern is:

/**
 * <remarks>Information about fix here</remarks>
 * <fixes>NameOfFixHere</fixes>
 */

#if _FIXES_SAMP && defined _ALS_NameOfFixHere
    #error _ALS_NameOfFixHere defined
#endif
native BAD_NameOfFixHere(params) = NameOfFixHere;

/**
 * <remarks>Information about fix here</remarks>
 * <fixes>NameOfFixHere</fixes>
 */

#if FIX_NameOfFixHere
    stock FIXES_NameOfFixHere(params)
    {
        return 0;
    }
    
    // The trailing `(` is VERY important to keep future `native X() = Y;`s working.
    #if _FIXES_SAMP
        #define _ALS_NameOfFixHere
        #define NameOfFixHere( FIXES_NameOfFixHere(
    #endif
    #define _ALS_NameOfFixHere__
    #define NameOfFixHere__( FIXES_NameOfFixHere(
#endif

A copyable version of this pattern is at the end of the file.

• Enums start with E_ or e_ depending on type, then follow rules for macros.
• NO libraries should be included - not even the default SA:MP ones. Let the user do it.
• Due to the above rule, you cannot assume any third party libraries AT ALL, so do not use them. This can lead to some code duplication, but also means that the version of the code used here can be tailored for optimisations.
• Certain terms may be shortened when dealing with long callback names to avoid compile truncation warnings (max symbol length is 31). Current list:
• Checkpoint: CP
• Update: Upd
• TextDraw: TD
• Object: Obj
• Player: P
• Document all fixes at the top of the file, and highlight code.
• 4 space TABS - do not edit this file in PAWNO unless you know how to correct the indentation.
• All rules have exceptions, but they must be justifiable. For example IS_FILTERSCRIPT is a global variable, but is not called FIXES_gIsFilterscript to better match the FILTERSCRIPT macro it replaces. Now a macro for _FIXES_gIsFilterscript.
• Variables which need to be fully global (i.e. not static), but should not actually be used by other people (e.g. appear inside a macro) should be prefixed with _FIXES instead of FIXES to indicate their private use.
• No comments beyond the end of column 80 (where the line in PAWNO is).
• If a bug is fixed in some version of the server it can be conditionally included here. This is done by checking for the existance of a native function introduced in the same server version. For example TogglePlayerControllable was fixed in 0.3eRC6, the same time as the SetObjectMaterial native was introduced, thus the inclusion becomes:

#if !defined FIX_TogglePlayerControllable 
     #if defined SetObjectMaterial 
         #define FIX_TogglePlayerControllable (0) 
     #else 
         #define FIX_TogglePlayerControllable (1) 
     #endif 
#elseif _FIXES_IS_UNSET(FIX_TogglePlayerControllable) 
     #undef FIX_TogglePlayerControllable 
     #define FIX_TogglePlayerControllable (2) 
#endif 

This only includes this fix if that native doesn't exist. A copyable version of this pattern is at the end of the file.

• To reduce general memory consumption, strings in this include are stored globally in constant arrays and referenced. This is EXACTLY as fast as using the string constants directly, but means that strings are not stored in the assembly multiple times (unless the string is only used once, in which case it's more work for no gain). See this post for more details: http://forum.sa-mp.com/showpost.php?p=1795601
• DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE IN PAWNO OR ON GITHUB. Both mess up the spacing - GitHub in an almost irreversible way (except for the fact that nothing is irreversible in source control. Pawno spacing is less tricky to solve, and can be worked around if you know when it uses spaces and tabs - in short, always write code first THEN indent and you won't have a problem (in that editor at least, that is normally a bad way to write code).

Documentation Explanation

The fixes.inc code itself now contains all of the documentation in its header, formatted using the compiler's natively supported pawn-doc, plus some custom XSL. Previously README.md and the header had to be kept in sync manually. Now you can just compile a script with -r and get a large amount of XML documentation, including all of this header in a <library></library> pair. The repository comes with a file called markdown.xsl that, when saved as pawno/xml/pawndoc.xsl, will transform that XML to markdown to keep README.md fully up-to-data almost automatically.

The descriptions of the fixes all look like:

<fix name="Short Name" disabled="true" fixed="Optional server version of official fix where applicable"> 
     <problem> 
     Description of problem. 
         </problem> 
     <solution> 
         Description of solution. 
     </solution> 
     <see>Relevant functions.</see> 
     <author href="Optional address of their profile">Person who wrote the fix</author> 
     <post href="Optional link to the original post where applicable." /> 
</fix> 

Thanks

A huge thanks to all the community members that have reported and fixed bugs, this include would not be anywhere near the level of quality it is right now without all of you. Fix writers are all listed above by their contributions. Fix reporters can be seen by browsing the github issues. A special thanks also to @ziggi for hosting this repo for a long time.