Using CFFI with c_environment

[sheepcloner]

The python lib provided for pcduino with gpio lacks quite a bit. In particular I am interested in in pulseIn function, which is not available. I tried to write my own, but I get strange behavior (this is for HC-SR04 distance sensor).
I see that another issue was closed asking people to use CFFI. It is not clear to me how to use it, so I tried the following and failed with ugly compile errors:

from cffi import FFI
ffi = FFI()
lib = ffi.verify("#include <~/c_enviroment/sample/core.h>")

as you can see I did not get far ( I am sure I am doing something totally wrong). I get this error:

File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/cffi/ffiplatform.py", line 51, in _build
raise VerificationError('%s: %s' % (e.class.name, e))
cffi.ffiplatform.VerificationError: CompileError: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1

I have also tried:

ffi.verify("#include \"/home/ubuntu/c_enviroment/sample/core.h\"")

This time it will find core.h, but complain that it can not find all the other .h files like Arduino.h that core.h refers too.

I would appreciate your help. Thank you