On Tue, 11 Nov 2008, Jefferson Heard wrote:
Actually, one language you mention there *is* worse than the others for writing wrappable library code: C++. Admittedly, they've got a Python interface now via boost, but the main problem with writing wrappable C++ code is the template system and the inheritence systems getting in the way. Symbol names aren't predictable and not standardized, so it becomes impossible to write a portable system for finding and binding to functions in a library. I've not yet found a good way to do it in FFI code, and I would love to, as one library in particular I hold near and dear -- OpenSceneGraph -- is entirely written in C++.
SWIG helps wrapping C++ libraries by providing C wrappers to C++ functions. However, as far as I know, templates cannot be wrapped as they are, but only instances of templates. Thus there is no wrapper to STL.