Status of Win32 C++ interop

[Benjamin Thaut via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Tuesday, 8 September 2015 at 12:56:00 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>
>
> This is really very clear and helpful, and I appreciate your 
> taking the time.  I will place it on the wiki if that's okay.

Thats ok.

>
> Library support is surely one of the largest impediments to the 
> adoption of D, and we ought to place some emphasis on updating 
> the documentation here:
> http://dlang.org/cpp_interface.html
>
> How does it work when external APIs expect objects from the C++ 
> standard library?  strings, and so on?  How about funny pointer 
> types?  shared_ptr  etc?  std::vector, std::list?

For templated types like std::vector, std::list and shared_ptr 
you have two options:
- Redo the complete implementation on the D side ensuring that 
the data layout is the same
- Or, expose helper functions which call placement new / 
desturctor of your needed std::vector<T> and do the hidden data 
trick I described above. The regular functions of std::vector 
just have to be declared and the linker will find them if and 
only if the c++ side instanciated the template.

>
> Here is one C++ library used by many in finance (at least as a 
> backup).  I think there might be a decent amount of value in 
> making this usable from D.  (Trying to put my own interests 
> aside!)  Paging Andy Smith ?
>
> http://quantlib.org/reference/_bermudan_swaption_8cpp-example.html

I think you have to make this usable from D yourself ;-)

>
> Are there any well-known C++ libraries that you have interfaced 
> to ?  Could you give some examples of how long it takes ?

I'm interfacing to a 3D engine I'm working on in my spare time 
with some collegues. So no well known C++ library.

>
> Would you be able to drop me an email about something else?  No 
> contact info on your blog, but my domain is 
> kaleidicassociates.com and my user id is laeeth@

Will do.

Kind Regards
Benjamin Thaut