How can I use header for C that has typedef enum, when converting code to c++?

I need to use some C code in a C++ project but I'm getting build errors for one of the c original's .h files.

The error has to do with some typedef enum parts, which I undestand that c and c++ handles differently. (or c++ doesn't do)

Here is a minimal version of that c style .h:
(there's several more similar entries in the real file)

typedef enum {
   ILCLIENT_EMPTY_BUFFER_DONE  = 0x1   /**< Set when a buffer is
                                           returned from an input
                                           port */
} ILEVENT_MASK_T;

The error message I get is:

pihwdecode.cpp:35:99: error: invalid conversion from ‘int’ to ‘ILCLIENT_CREATE_FLAGS_T’ [-fpermissive]
    if(ilclient_create_component(client, &video_decode, "video_decode", ILCLIENT_DISABLE_ALL_PORTS | ILCLIENT_ENABLE_INPUT_BUFFERS) != 0)

I can't start rewriting and rebuilding all the C libraries so how can I add this to the c++ project? I have tried to wrap the #include call in a extern "C" block but that doesn't help.

All suggestions welcome! Cheers, Fred

Solution

One trick you can do is defining an overloaded operator | for enum types that are intended to be used as bitmasks like this:

ILCLIENT_CREATE_FLAGS_T operator|(ILCLIENT_CREATE_FLAGS_T a, ILCLIENT_CREATE_FLAGS_T b) {
    return static_cast<ILCLIENT_CREATE_FLAGS_T>(static_cast<int>(a) | static_cast<int>(b)); }

This will then allow you to | together mulitple such flags without additional casts in your C++ code.

The reason this is useful for allowing more C-like code -- in C you can implicitly convert an enum to an int or an int to an enum. In C++ you can do the first, but not the second.