Re: "Official" binding library

[Tim Mensch <tim-lua-l@...>]

On 12/5/2011 11:08 AM, Dimiter 'malkia' Stanev wrote:
> C is proven interface to work for system level work, because it's 
> compatible across many compilers and run-time systems. C++ is nice 
> that it embeds types and such, but it fails to encode them the same 
> way on the binary level (would not even start mentioning the class 
> layout and virtual inheritance low-level schemes).

That could help to a point, but sometimes your entire problem requires 
objects which can be "owned" by either C++ or Lua, at which point it's 
nice to wrap shared pointers in Lua. For my purposes it's fine that I 
wouldn't have binary compatibility; I like to statically link Lua in 
with the libraries anyway, so everything can be built by the same compiler.

I'd use LuaBind, but it generates *so* much bloat that I can't stomach 
it.  The tolua++ code doesn't handle shared_ptr natively, as I've 
mentioned on the list before, and its internal code is ugly. None of the 
other C++ wrappers handle shared_ptr in the way that I want, so it looks 
like I'm going to have to join the ranks of people reinventing the wheel 
to do their own custom binding generator.

I have too much to bind to want to do it all by hand, so I'm looking at 
taking an approach like lqt or dub, where I take the output of a C++ 
parser and create my own flavor of bindings. No one does it "the right 
way" (IMO) except possibly LuaBind, and their approach is WAY too heavy.

Tim