Re: GNOME Database kit

[Manish Vachharajani <mvachhar vger rutgers edu>]

On Wed, 5 Aug 1998, David Jeske wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 05, 1998 at 03:22:34PM -0400, Elliot Lee wrote:
> > On Wed, 5 Aug 1998, Adam Keys wrote:
> > 
> > > My non-ODBC question is this.  How bindable is C++?  AFAIK, gtk+ is
> > > written in C which makes binding other languages like perl or Python
> > > relatively simple.  Is C++ this way?  C++ really works so much better
> > > AFAIK for this type of abstraction, and I'd like to work from that
> > > angle, but I fear that would lock out perl, Python, etc coders.
> > 
> > You can do abstraction in any language - look at the way gtk+'s object
> > model works.
> 
> The problem with using C++ for the abstraction, is that if you use C++
> objects, you basically can't put them in shared libraries without lots
> of headaches.
> 
> A partial list of things which will break C++ shlibs:
>   - changing instance data (removing or adding)
>   - changing virtual methods (removing or adding)
>   - changing static or final methods or variables
> 

Well, in all fairness, this is true with C structs as well.  Any addition
or removal of data items could lead to problems.  The thing in C is you
can always add and remove functions without breaking things.  

BTW:  Why do changing static methods break things?  Isn't it just like a C
symbol except name mangled?

Manish Vachharajani
<mvachhar@vger.rutgers.edu>