Re: Re: Boost::Ruby

* Rene Rivera <[email protected]> [2005-10-12 23:04]:
> David Abrahams wrote:
> >Alan Gutierrez <[email protected]> writes:
> >
> >>Hello. Responding to Rene's message on the boost mailing list to
> >>   post here regarding a Ruby langbinding.
> >>
> >>   I've checked out a lot of languaged bindings for reference, as I
> >>   noted, these are the ones that looked relevant...
> >>
> >>   http://engrm.com/wiki/Refresh#Ruby.2FC.2B.2B_Bindings
> >>
> >>   The Java bindings are a better reference for me than Python
> >>   bindings, since I have no Python experience.
> >
> >However, the design of that particular binding facility may not map
> >very well onto langbinding, FWIW.  We do have a rough strategy for
> >Java, but IIUC it will have to be a bit different from the others,
> >because the langbinding library will have to generate JNI code that is
> >eventually compiled.

> For a while I entertained the idea of writing a special loader that 
> would inject symbol bindings dynamically.

    Rene

    You're talking about a special java.lang.ClassLoader, right?

    The Objectweb ASM library is very popular in Java land these
    days. It's a petite library (50K core) and it has a clean API
    for bytecode manipulation. There's a lot of bytecode abuse out
    there, but I don't know of anyone using ASM (or BCEL, or the
    like) to make a better JNI.
    
    I was playing around with SWIG for a few minutes yesterday, and
    it did appear that the Java component was larger and more
    complex that other components. Scripting langauges like Perl,
    Python, and Ruby consider binding to C at the outset, it seems,
    while Java has always adhered to it's notion of a world of Pure Java.

    I didn't think that you or David were considering doing much
    development in the bridged language, whatever it may be. Though
    with this as an example, I can see how it could be much easier
    in the case of a recalcitrant language, to implement a facade in
    the language to a well behaved, well defined C++ interface.

    The ClassLoader could be configured on teh Java side to load a
    Langbinding library, and map the contents to whatever package
    suits the Java application.

    You've probably done much of this research yourself, I'm only
    dumping what I know. Cheers. 

--
Alan Gutierrez - [email protected] - http://engrm.com/blogometer/


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