Re: [Vala] Header file generation

[Jürg Billeter <j bitron ch>]

On Mon, 2009-01-12 at 18:38 +0100, Philip Van Hoof wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-01-11 at 14:14 +0100, Jürg Billeter wrote:
> >  * Minimize use of header files
> >    A more radical approach would be to not use header files where not
> >    necessary. The Vala compiler could insert required declarations at
> >    the top of each generated .c file and only use include directives for
> >    external libraries. This would lead to optimal rebuild performance at
> >    the cost of a bit larger .c files.
> >
> >    We obviously still need to support generating header files to use
> >    libraries written in Vala. I would propose to add an option -H foo.h
> >    to valac to generate a single header file with the full public C API.
>
> So let valac copy what would end up in -priv.h files into each .c file
> being generated?
>
> Well, the .c is not for human eyes nor hands to see nor modify, so
> that's okay for me.
>
> You kinda loose the capability of interfering from a manual .c file,
> like I described in this example (although the particular example
> wouldn't be affected): http://live.gnome.org/Vala/MultiImplementInC

I don't think that this would have a large effect when combining C and
Vala in the same library. The only difference is that you get one
instead of multiple .h files per valac invocation. If you want to be
able to access internal Vala methods from the C part, we can certainly
add a --header-internal option to generate a -priv.h file.

Jürg