Re: Another good URL for all you C++ haters

["Gerhard Häring" <g.haering@___skynamics.com.invalid>]

Chris M. Moore wrote:
> http://www.byte.com/documents/s=1271/byt20010831s0001/0903_nichols.html
> 
> Excerpt:
> 
>   Even Floyd, who loves the language, admits that, "Its greatest
>   weaknesses is a flaw in the interface/implementation separation. A
>   class exposes its private data/methods to the world and a programmer
>   must use some tricks (that should be supported directly in the
>   language) to overcome this."
> 
> Whay I'd really like to see which would give Ada a huge lead over Java
> would be a tool which takes C++ declarations and produced Ada
> bindings.  The GNAT User manual hints that such a tool exists but
> states that ACT don't distribute it.

Could you tell us where in the manual to find this hint?

> I remember seeing something
> somewhere about bindings being generated automatically by SGI.  Are
> these tools still available?`

You can google for "c2ada" and "cbind".

IMO these tools inevitably suck because complicated C headers with lots 
of #defines (even parts of structs conditionally defined in and out and 
such; nested structs, ...) don't map nicely to Ada (for pyAda, I ended 
up writing all the interfacing stuff by hand).

That's why COM, CORBA, XPCOM and friends where invited. Have an IDL/type 
library describe the interface and create correct bindings for your 
language automatically.

Gerhard
-- 
Gerhard H�ring
skynamics AG
g.haering@skynamics.com
http://www.skynamics.com