IAR compilation failure, CCS compilation works. Types Incompatibility

After developing a new firmware (main and libraries) with CCS for my CC2538, all errors are debugged, and now, device is working fine.

As from CCS I can not flash the firmware permanently, I'm working with IAR to develop this action.

On IAR, I have created the workspace, the project and included all libraries and files needed to compile the firmware. But, compilation fails due to incompatible types errors.

Error[Pe144]: a value of type "int" cannot be used to initialize an entity of type "signed short *"
```
int16_t *accData[3] = malloc(sizeof(int16_t));
```
Error[Pe513]: a value of type "int" cannot be assigned to an entity of type "signed short *"
```
int16_t *accData[3] = malloc(sizeof(int16_t));
```

Error[Pe120]: return value type ("signed short **") does not match the function type ("signed short*")

int16_t * lsm303d_readAccData(void)
{
    int16_t *accData[3] = malloc(sizeof(int16_t));
    ...
    return accData;
}

Which is the root cause of these errors? Maybe, any option of the compiler? Do I need to add any file? Or prototype on the code?

KR!

Solution

Which is the root cause of these errors?

"a value of type "int"" is the root cause. There should be no int here! Just the signed short* (which is your int16_t*) and a void* from malloc.

This is because you are using a C90 compiler and forgot to #include <stdlib.h>. Upon finding a function with no prototype, C90 would implicitly assume you want a function returning int, which explains the compiler errors "a value of type "int"". But malloc actually returns a void*, so this is a severe bug. Solve this by including the header stdlib.h where malloc is found.

This undesired and irrational behavior of the language was fixed 17 years ago. Consider using a modern compiler instead, or configure your compiler to use the current C language standard (ISO 9899:2011).

That being said, this code doesn't make any sense either:

int16_t *accData[3] = malloc(sizeof(int16_t));

You probably meant

int16_t *accData = malloc( sizeof(int16_t[3]) );