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> Nim has fantastic interoperability with C++ Last year I asked around in the Nim community if "the C++ interop" will allow me to easily link-to-and-import in

> Nim has fantastic interoperability with C++ Last year I asked around in the Nim community if "the C++ interop" will allow me to easily link-to-and-import in Nim a C++ lib (in this case, a 3D engine called WickedEngine) and thus make a game using its surface API from Nim instead of writing it all in C++. There seemed to be no straightforward way to do so whatsoever. Sure you can import old-school C APIs. Sure maybe you can have Nim transpile to C++ code. But "fantastic interoperability" didn't have my fantasy here in mind: something like `@importcpp "../libwickedengine/compilecommands.json"` and boom, done, including LSP auto-complete =) It would be the same for other major C++ libs then: think LLVM, Dear Imgui, Qt, OpenCV, libtorrent, FLTK, wxWidgets, bgfx, assimp, SFML...... Sure, I get it, "unlike C, C++ doesn't have an ABI. These C++ libs should maintain and expose a basic C API". I agree! But still..

elcritch 1y ago
There's a wrapper for unreal engine using the C++ interopt. It's doable but not automatic. https://github.com/jmgomez/NimForUE https://github.com/jmgomez/NimForUE Mentally I view Nim as a better, safer, easier C++ now. Anything I wanted to do in C/C++ I can do in Nim, but far easier. Not exactly a Carbon competitor but still an alt C++ 2.0 with C++ interopt.
miguel_martin 1y ago
This is a bit controversial, but in my opinion, just manually write bindings for the API surface you care about. There are tools to help automate the process ([c2nim](https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim), [futhark](https://github.com/PMunch/futhark https://github.com/PMunch/futhark)), but these tools are mostly for C. Theoretically if you want to import a large C++ API (e.g. if you were importing Google's C++ codebase*), you could do so with libclang. I was working on an alternative to c2nim that supported Objective-c and C++, which used libclang, but it's currently in my project graveyard. If you're expecting a @cImport from Zig, then the closest you have to that is tools mentioned above to help with the process. * to be clear, I understand why Google does not want to use Nim instead of creating a new language (Carbon). i.e. readable code output, full control of the compiler and language design, etc. The amount of manual work to write bindings is minimal, i.e. you can do so simply by declaring a prototype for a procedure and then appending `{.importcpp, header: "<path>".}`, the same for types. And then compile with `nim cpp`. Compare the way you wrap libraries in Python, Nim requires so much less work - and yet the Python community wraps every C/C++ library you can think of. Again, in my opinion, if you really want a library: wrap it yourself (ideally the subset you need) or rewrite it in Nim. Also, most of the libraries you have listed have bindings already: - Qt: https://github.com/jerous86/nimqt https://github.com/jerous86/nimqt or [seaqt](https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/12709 https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/12709) - ImGUI: https://github.com/nimgl/imgui https://github.com/nimgl/imgui - SFML: https://github.com/oprypin/nim-csfml https://github.com/oprypin/nim-csfml - SDL: https://github.com/nim-lang/sdl2 https://github.com/nim-lang/sdl2 - sokol: https://github.com/floooh/sokol-nim https://github.com/floooh/sokol-nim If there's a popular enough C or C++ library, it's probably already wrapped, especially within the gamedev community.

elcritch 1y ago

There's a wrapper for unreal engine using the C++ interopt. It's doable but not automatic. https://github.com/jmgomez/NimForUE https://github.com/jmgomez/NimForUE Mentally I view Nim as a better, safer, easier C++ now. Anything I wanted to do in C/C++ I can do in Nim, but far easier. Not exactly a Carbon competitor but still an alt C++ 2.0 with C++ interopt.

miguel_martin 1y ago

This is a bit controversial, but in my opinion, just manually write bindings for the API surface you care about. There are tools to help automate the process ([c2nim](https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim), [futhark](https://github.com/PMunch/futhark https://github.com/PMunch/futhark)), but these tools are mostly for C. Theoretically if you want to import a large C++ API (e.g. if you were importing Google's C++ codebase*), you could do so with libclang. I was working on an alternative to c2nim that supported Objective-c and C++, which used libclang, but it's currently in my project graveyard. If you're expecting a @cImport from Zig, then the closest you have to that is tools mentioned above to help with the process. * to be clear, I understand why Google does not want to use Nim instead of creating a new language (Carbon). i.e. readable code output, full control of the compiler and language design, etc. The amount of manual work to write bindings is minimal, i.e. you can do so simply by declaring a prototype for a procedure and then appending `{.importcpp, header: "<path>".}`, the same for types. And then compile with `nim cpp`. Compare the way you wrap libraries in Python, Nim requires so much less work - and yet the Python community wraps every C/C++ library you can think of. Again, in my opinion, if you really want a library: wrap it yourself (ideally the subset you need) or rewrite it in Nim. Also, most of the libraries you have listed have bindings already: - Qt: https://github.com/jerous86/nimqt https://github.com/jerous86/nimqt or [seaqt](https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/12709 https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/12709) - ImGUI: https://github.com/nimgl/imgui https://github.com/nimgl/imgui - SFML: https://github.com/oprypin/nim-csfml https://github.com/oprypin/nim-csfml - SDL: https://github.com/nim-lang/sdl2 https://github.com/nim-lang/sdl2 - sokol: https://github.com/floooh/sokol-nim https://github.com/floooh/sokol-nim If there's a popular enough C or C++ library, it's probably already wrapped, especially within the gamedev community.