Re: [Vala] inline C

[Conrad Steenberg <conrad steenberg caltech edu>]

On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 12:21 -0500, Yu Feng wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 09:18 -0800, Conrad Steenberg wrote:
> > On Sat, 2008-12-13 at 13:00 -0500, Jamie McCracken wrote:
> > > The disadvantage to inlining is it destroys the platform independence -
> > > IE you would not be able to create a gcc front end for vala nor would
> > > you be able to have vala->c++ or vala->jvm/clr. 
> > >
> > > jamie
>
> Is it generally possible to use in C C++ libraries at all? 

If I understand your question correctly, the canonical answer is that 'C
is a strict subset of C++', so yes you can use C in C++ libraries.

In practice there are a few things you need to do to make it work, e.g.
C header files should have an extern "C++" {} block to tell the C++
compiler to use C calling conventions and name mangling for linking to
existing C-compiled libraries. And there are a few corner cases where
the C and C++ specs differ.

Cheers,
Conrad

> > Hmmm, I would love to be able to use C++ libraries from Vala (or Genie,
> > since it's a natural jump from Numeric Python which I currently use).
> >
> > Any ideas on how to do that? Compile the vala/genie-produced C code with
> > a C++ compiler?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Conrad