Re: [Vala] inline C

[Hans Vercammen <hveso3 gmail com>]

On Sun, 2008-12-14 at 00:51 +0600, Ildar Mulyukov wrote:
> On 14.12.2008 00:00:31, Jamie McCracken wrote:
> > On Sat, 2008-12-13 at 17:46 +0000, Karl Lattimer wrote:
> > > On Sat, 2008-12-13 at 23:44 +0600, Ildar Mulyukov wrote:
> > > > What do you think about having C inline in Vala? This looks quite  
> > > > natural for Vala. Especially while Vala is quite unperfect (having  
> > > > 304 open bugs). This could ease implementing workarounds ;)
> > > +1 it would be nicer for certain things to just use C rather than  
> > > having to write vapi e.g. the uuid.vapi I had to write for wizbit,  
> > > meant more code than just using C...
> > > There would have to be some sanity wrapping though to make sure that  
> > > the C stuff would work properly with the vala stuff...
> >
> > You can currently get the same effect by using extern keyword for c  
> > functions in an included c file (you can pass a .c file to valac for  
> > this purpose)
> >
> > 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.
>
> 1. inlining asm is most unportable. But this did not prevent from  
> adding it to GCC. Surely it should be documented as limiting  
> portability.

Vala is not a preprocessor for gcc, although I'm sure many people look
at it this way. Embedding ASM/C could also horribly break the automatic
memory management, one of the most overlooked key features. Also, I
expect my vala code to go smoothly through the gcc compiler and to abort
otherwise. Embedding might be nice in some cases, but no doubt it can
generate uncontrollable side-effects. Like Jamie said; if there is
specific need you can import the exotic stuff by using extern and
dedicated c files or use the vala api files.

> 2. Making different backends can be planned only when Vala will  
> correctly implement 100% of it's features (delegates, properties). When  
> time comes, we can limit this feature to just one backend, etc. etc.  
> Anyway let's make small steps: those ones that we need; later we can  
> change it ( XP approach ).

I don't really favour this approach. Personally, I rather have limited
functionality that works and is not expected to change as opposed to
having a bunch of sugars that work in most cases and are removed/limited
when proven to fail otherwise. The vala concept works fine, so I think
it would better to target 1.0-stable and fix the relevant blocking bugs
instead.

Hans