DConf Online 2021 - Great Programming with ImportC - Walter Bright

The D programming language is designed to have a zero-cost interface to C, but D still needs the corresponding C declarations to be written in D in order for the D compiler to access them. While this is very easy and straightforward, hand-translating 10,000+ lines of C header files gets very tedious very quickly. Mechanical translation of C headers to D has had only limited success.

The ideal is for it to “just work”. The only solid way to get D code to import C declarations is for the D compiler to be able to compile C code directly.

Walter has dismissed this approach as unworkable in the past. But the more he thought about, the more he realized he could make it work. After all, he's written a C99 compiler before. He knows how to do it. Piece of cake, right? Walter will talk about the journey of ImportC from inspiration to working implementation. And he would like to thank Iain Buclaw for his invaluable help with ImportC!

Slides:
http://dconf.org/2021/online/slides/b...

Q & A Session:
   • DConf Online 2021 Q & A Livestream --...  

Learn more about DConf and the D Programming Language at:
https://dconf.org/
https://dlang.org/

ImportC Reference:
https://dlang.org/spec/importc.html

#dlang #DConfOnline #DConf