On 01/06/2012 12:34 PM, Piotr Szturmaj wrote:
Is should be possible to use debug info of a library to generate D or
other language bindings. Current approaches are SWIG, htod and/or manual
coding. The first two do not always work as expected (try using them to
make OpenCV bindings) as parser-based converters do not always support
all build environment details. Often, you need a fully capable C/C++
compiler to correctly parse headers.
Function information may be extracted from:
* PDB files using DIA SDK on Windows
* DWARF info using libdwarf or libdw on *nixes
Debug files contain information about functions, their argument types
and return types, about structs and classes/namespaces (C++). Recent
version of DWARF may even contain information about macros.
The usual binding creation would be simple:
1. build library using existing build environment with debug info
2. run converter to generate D bindings (this may be used to make C#'s
bindings as well)
Thanks to the 1st point we can avoid many incompatibilities with
SWIG/htod parsers as we get all symbols in one file. The whole process
may be automated in most circumstances. Eventually some fixup files may
be used to assist with conversion (similar to SWIG files, but without
enumerating everything).
Thoughts?
Sure, not exactly what you have in mind, but at least an exotic thought
Source commenting -> Doxygen XML output -> XML to D.
This is not as obscure as one might think, F.I. - GCCXML based bindings.
- Ages ago I've talked with Frank (keinfarbton) about using Java2XML to
automate SWT porting...
