More automated interfacing of D with C codebases

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 2012-10-21 21:45, timotheecour wrote:
> Manually porting of C/C++ libraries shouldn't be the way to go (a
> major problem being when said library gets updated, human errors,
> porting to different architectures etc).

SWIG requires some kind of interface files, which I assume one must have 
to manually write. Then what's the difference?

> I've had good experience using SWIG to automate the job for me,
> and used it successfully to port the following libraries to D:
>
> * ncurses
> * opencv
> * sfml
> to name a few.
>
> I believe this is the way forward, as opposed to maintaining
> (necessary stale) ports such as Deimos.
>
> Swig isn't perfect however, and sometimes will bail out on
> constructs such as:
> C++ classes with multiple inheritance, or a few obscure C or C++
> constructs. Even in that case, I find it much easier to tweak the
> swig interface file to get desired output rather than undertake
> the huge manual conversion task. For sfml, the interface file is
> just about 40 lines for example.
>
> Improving such kind of automated tools is where we should be
> concentrating efforts, not on maintaining deimos. One such
> improvement I made was to allow conversion of C++ templates to D
> templates (works in large majority of cases), which makes the
> library much easier to use than using name mangling schemes. More
> improvements would be welcome (eg support for static library
> generation as opposed to dynamic load libraries), reducing the
> need for tweaking swig interface files etc.

I don't think SWIG is the right approach because:

* You have to create these interface files
* It seem to not handle all code
* No support for Objective-C

BTW, how does SWIG handle macros and documentation?

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg