On 10/21/06, Branko Èibej <brane@xbc.nu> wrote:
> Garrett Rooney wrote:
> > I'd like to propose another idea for how we could write parts of
> > Subversion itself (not just the command line clients, but actual
> > portions of the libraries) in a higher level language, but still
> > expose a C level interface to the rest of the world, without dealing
> > with the binary compatibility and other issues that come with C++.
>
>
> I am continually amazed by the thousands of otherwise quite competent
> programmers who still believe that "C++" and "binary incompatibility"
> are two sides of the same coin, or that you can't expose a completely
> C-like interface from something compiled as C++.
>
> You can, and you can even provide a C++ API that has *no* binary
> compatibility issues, ever, on any platform (heh, that is, no more than
> any C API).
>
> Of course "API" and "implementation language" aren't related either,
> that's another bugaboo.
No argument there, it's certainly possible to write in C++ yet avoid
the various types of binary incompatibility (i.e. don't expose
anything that depends on the STL). It just seems that if we're going
to jump through hoops to do that sort of thing in a C++
implementation, we might consider jumping through a similar number of
hoops to use a language that's a bit less prone to shooting oneself in
the foot.
-garrett
Received on Sat Oct 21 22:55:50 2006