>> Are there cases other than Microsoft's .lib/.dll that you're thinking of?
>
> Yup, OSX uses .dylib for shared libraries and .a for static. Building our
> GMP gives me libgmp.dylib for example.
OK, thanks.
> I guess this is more what I meant. I think it could be unfortunate to
> require this capability in the the language. I see compiling extra
> C/whatever as the job of a Makefile, not Chapel. Users could still create
> a static lib that they then use in a require statement.
What if we think of it less as a language change and more as an extension
that's supported by our compiler in support of libraries. I worry about
the level of pain of using external libraries without some sort of feature
along these lines (again, FFTW being the example that's motivating me at
present, but it feels reminiscent of things we've wrestled with when
supporting re2, gmp, etc.).
> Actually... thinking about it, it may not be too bad
> - we already need the extern declarations in the Chapel source. What would
> stop us from just putting those as extern declarations in the C code?
I think there are a few problems with this approach...
One is merely philosophical -- it seems unwise/unsafe to think we know
what C prototype to generate better than the C library writer. If we get
something wrong (say, use 'int' rather than 'c_int'), we end up lying
about the interface in a way that's likely to break in ugly ways.
Another is technological -- we would presumably need a way in Chapel to
express every possible prototype in C, which we can't do today. There is
a mode in which one can ask the Chapel compiler to emit prototypes for
external routines, and in practice it generates lots of warnings because
of minor differences like const-ness, etc.
The third is a convenience factor. I think it's really nice that one can
interoperate with C in ways that are very productive in Chapel, like:
extern proc printf(x....);
rather than having to specify exactly what the signature of printf() is.
It seems a shame to throw away this capability to me -- it's very useful.
-Brad
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