On 2008-03-08 16:34-0500 Hezekiah M. Carty wrote: > PLplot core devs, > > If there is an interest, I would like to integrate the OCaml bindings > I have written for PLplot in to the official source tree. I have > tried to structure building these bindings so that this will be > relatively straightforward. > > I updated the OCaml PLplot bindings to be up to date with version > 5.9.0 today in Subversion - > http://code.google.com/p/ocaml-plplot/source/browse/trunk/ > In addition, I have moved from a completely make-based build to > ocamlbuild for most of the process. ocamlbuild is a > make/cmake/etc-like build system for OCaml which, among other things, > automatically determines dependencies between source files. It is > also part of the vanilla OCaml distribution since version 3.10.0.
Hi Hez: The usual way bindings are implemented for any language is to hand-craft or automatically generate C (or C++) code that interfaces between the language and our core PLplot C library. That interface is then compiled and linked into a shared object which is either linked at link time or dynamically loaded at run time for the language environment in question. Also note that many of our bindings as a matter of convenience have an interface written in the language in question which then calls the C interface which is then linked to our core library, but that is just a detail. Is that a good overview of how the OCaml PLplot bindings are implemented? If so, then cmake is very good at taking care of the details of building the shared object from the interface source code. See cmake/modules/$LANGUAGE.cmake (where needed system files are found and variables are set up for a particular language) and bindings/$LANGUAGE/CMakeLists.txt for a number of examples, where LANGUAGE is c++, etc. I suggest you look at several languages in cmake/modules/$LANGUAGE.cmake to gain a full appreciation of the power of CMake to find system files, but for the interface build step I would start with bindings/c++/CMakeLists.txt since the C++ interface is completely straightforward to understand from the build perspective. CMake syntax is easy to understand so the above files should give you a good start at finding the required system files for the OCaml bindings and then building those bindings, but if you want to look deeper, than have a look at the CMake documentation links we have collected at http://www.miscdebris.net/plplot_wiki/index.php?title=General_CMake_documentation_links Also, I would be happy to help with any further questions you might have about CMake or building our present bindings. > Thank you for your time and for the wonderful PLplot library. On behalf of all the developers that have contributed to it over the years, you are most welcome! Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
