3 ms·
Dlang's betterC would be a good option for just a better-than-C language but looks like it doesn't support D's standard library [1]. That'd mean being stuck wit
by elcritch 5y ago
Dlang's betterC would be a good option for just a better-than-C language but looks like it doesn't support D's standard library [1]. That'd mean being stuck with plain C container libraries. :/
Personally, I was impressed by an approach taken by the authors of Pixie (a fast 2d library like Cairo) [2]. They created a "library wrapper" generator for Nim code that supports creating libraries Python, Node, C, and Nim itself that they call Genny [3]. Haven't tried it but being able to use Nim and it's ref based gc but still export to nice API's in other languages is fantastic. Pixie's aim is to be a Cairo alternative so it makes sense they'd need this. I hope the approach takes off. Usually writing any cross language API's is a lossy operation.
Here's a sample of the API definition:
exportObject Matrix3:
constructor:
matrix3
procs:
mul(Matrix3, Matrix3)
1: https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html
2: https://github.com/treeform/pixie https://github.com/treeform/pixie
3: https://github.com/treeform/genny https://github.com/treeform/genny
(edited formatting)
- david2ndaccount 5y agoThe consequences of betterC are listed out here. https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html#consequences https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html#consequences Notice that betterC does not exclude templates or destructors, so you could still use c++-style containers based around RAII, etc. The argument against it is a smaller ecosystem and you’d end up having to roll your own containers etc.