Creating a .di file for a custom C library

[Chris Piker]

On Tuesday, 30 March 2021 at 04:01:12 UTC, Brad wrote:
> I would like to use an updated version of the Termbox library 
> (written in C) with D.  I have the .h file.  This is new 
> territory for me (why try something easy - right?).  I think I 
> need to create a .di file that corresponds to the .h file.  I 
> also suspect that I need to put the library file (C code) into 
> the project as a file somehow.  I am probably just not looking 
> in the right place for the documentation, but I cannot seem to 
> find a lot of guidance in this area.
>
> Thanks in advance.

Hi Brad

I used dstep https://code.dlang.org/packages/dstep to help me 
with this process.  Though I ended up checking the output and 
fixing a couple oddities in the "extern (C):" line, it was *huge* 
time saver.

The result was a D module file (i.e. thing.d, not thing.di) that 
I could include like any other, so long as the C library was 
specified on the compiler command line.

In addition, you might want to check out 
https://wiki.dlang.org/Deimos where standard patterns are 
discussed for D prototypes of C libraries.  I ended up using the 
command line:

   dub init --format=deimos

to start off the wrapper lib package, then copied in the C 
header, and then ran dstep.

Cheers,