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digitalmars.D.learn - D-Cocoa Port

reply "Rizo Isrof" <rizo odis-project.org> writes:
Hi,

I am planning to use D for creating native applications on Mac OS 
X. For that, of course, D must interact with the Cocoa API. I 
have no knowledge of how this bindings could be done. I've 
already looked at Cocado[1] and do know the Michel Fortin's 
D-ObjC bridge[2], and would like to be enlightened about some 
details:
  * What is their (or any other possible) approach of porting 
Cocoa to D? -- here I essentially ask for technical reading 
sources (books/articles/references, etc);
  * Is it possible to establish an ABI compatibility with ObjC 
directly or through the C ABI? -- There's a question on 
_stackoverflow_[3] where the answers describe what could be 
achieved with Objective-C's Runtime Reference[4];
  * Is it feasible to make this kind of stuff work nicely and get 
the level of performance and stability like, e.g., with Qt 
framework on Mac OS X?

I have no experience at all in this field so forgive me any 
technical faults. Any help would be appreciable.

Thanks in advance for your responses.

[1]: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cocodao/
[2]: http://michelf.com/projects/d-objc/
[3]: 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5901508/calling-cocoa-apis-from-c
[4]: 
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ObjCRuntimeRef/Reference/reference.html

  - Rizo
Apr 13 2012
parent reply Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2012-04-13 15:34, Rizo Isrof wrote:

 Hi,

 I am planning to use D for creating native applications on Mac OS X. For
 that, of course, D must interact with the Cocoa API. I have no knowledge
 of how this bindings could be done. I've already looked at Cocado[1] and
 do know the Michel Fortin's D-ObjC bridge[2], and would like to be
 enlightened about some details:
 * What is their (or any other possible) approach of porting Cocoa to D?
 -- here I essentially ask for technical reading sources
 (books/articles/references, etc);


There are three ways (two deepening on how you look at it).

1. Use the Objective-C runtime manually, which is implement with regular 
C functions.

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ObjCRuntimeRef/Reference/reference.html

2. Use a bridge that handles everything nicely. The bridge uses the same 
implementation as in the first way. The bridge also performs type 
conversions automatically and other things to ease the development.

http://www.dsource.org/projects/dstep
http://michelf.com/projects/d-objc-bridge/

3. Implement direct support in the language to be compatible with 
Objective-C. This is what Michel Fortin did here:

http://michelf.com/projects/d-objc/
(Note, this is not a bridge)

He forked DMD and added support for extern(Objective-C) which will 
output code similar to what GCC/Clang would do. This is a more direct 
way to interface with Objective-C and won't add any more overhead than 
using Objective-C directly would. I guess this would mean the ABI's are 
compatible.


 * Is it possible to establish an ABI compatibility with ObjC directly or
 through the C ABI? -- There's a question on _stackoverflow_[3] where the
 answers describe what could be achieved with Objective-C's Runtime
 Reference[4];


Both are possible, see above.


 * Is it feasible to make this kind of stuff work nicely and get the
 level of performance and stability like, e.g., with Qt framework on Mac
 OS X?


I think so if you use Michel's fork of DMD.


 I have no experience at all in this field so forgive me any technical
 faults. Any help would be appreciable.

 Thanks in advance for your responses.


I think the best way is to use the third one mentioned in the list 
above. Note that this is based on an older version of DMD. The project 
is not finished yet and is currently on old. Although an alpha version 
has been released.

The problem with a bridge is the it cause way to much bloat. A Hello 
World application written using a bridge generated a 60MB executable.

Using the Objective-C runtime manually is just too verbose and tedious. 
If you are interested in this you can have a look at my documentation of 
how my Objective-c/D bridge works and is implemented:

http://www.dsource.org/projects/dstep/wiki/ObjcBridge/BridgeInternals


 [1]: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cocodao/
 [2]: http://michelf.com/projects/d-objc/


Note, this is not a bridge. This is third one mentioned in the list above.


 [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5901508/calling-cocoa-apis-from-c
 [4]:
 http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ObjCRuntimeRef/Reference/reference.html


 - Rizo



-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Apr 13 2012
parent reply "Rizo Isrof" <rizo odis-project.org> writes:
On Friday, 13 April 2012 at 14:28:05 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:

 On 2012-04-13 15:34, Rizo Isrof wrote:

 Hi,

 I am planning to use D for creating native applications on Mac 
 OS X. For
 that, of course, D must interact with the Cocoa API. I have no 
 knowledge
 of how this bindings could be done. I've already looked at 
 Cocado[1] and
 do know the Michel Fortin's D-ObjC bridge[2], and would like 
 to be
 enlightened about some details:
 * What is their (or any other possible) approach of porting 
 Cocoa to D?
 -- here I essentially ask for technical reading sources
 (books/articles/references, etc);


 There are three ways (two deepening on how you look at it).

 1. Use the Objective-C runtime manually, which is implement 
 with regular C functions.

 https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ObjCRuntimeRef/Reference/reference.html

 2. Use a bridge that handles everything nicely. The bridge uses 
 the same implementation as in the first way. The bridge also 
 performs type conversions automatically and other things to 
 ease the development.

 http://www.dsource.org/projects/dstep
 http://michelf.com/projects/d-objc-bridge/

 3. Implement direct support in the language to be compatible 
 with Objective-C. This is what Michel Fortin did here:

 http://michelf.com/projects/d-objc/
 (Note, this is not a bridge)

 He forked DMD and added support for extern(Objective-C) which 
 will output code similar to what GCC/Clang would do. This is a 
 more direct way to interface with Objective-C and won't add any 
 more overhead than using Objective-C directly would. I guess 
 this would mean the ABI's are compatible.


 * Is it possible to establish an ABI compatibility with ObjC 
 directly or
 through the C ABI? -- There's a question on _stackoverflow_[3] 
 where the
 answers describe what could be achieved with Objective-C's 
 Runtime
 Reference[4];


 Both are possible, see above.


 * Is it feasible to make this kind of stuff work nicely and 
 get the
 level of performance and stability like, e.g., with Qt 
 framework on Mac
 OS X?


 I think so if you use Michel's fork of DMD.


 I have no experience at all in this field so forgive me any 
 technical
 faults. Any help would be appreciable.

 Thanks in advance for your responses.


 I think the best way is to use the third one mentioned in the 
 list above. Note that this is based on an older version of DMD. 
 The project is not finished yet and is currently on old. 
 Although an alpha version has been released.

 The problem with a bridge is the it cause way to much bloat. A 
 Hello World application written using a bridge generated a 60MB 
 executable.

 Using the Objective-C runtime manually is just too verbose and 
 tedious. If you are interested in this you can have a look at 
 my documentation of how my Objective-c/D bridge works and is 
 implemented:

 http://www.dsource.org/projects/dstep/wiki/ObjcBridge/BridgeInternals


 [1]: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cocodao/
 [2]: http://michelf.com/projects/d-objc/


 Note, this is not a bridge. This is third one mentioned in the 
 list above.


 [3]: 
 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5901508/calling-cocoa-apis-from-c
 [4]:
 http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ObjCRuntimeRef/Reference/reference.html


 - Rizo




Thank you for such a detailed overview of the existing approaches 
- it helped me a lot to understand the theory. As you suggested, 
I will probably use a modified version of the compiler for tests. 
But in order to fully understand the implementation details I 
will try to write my own  extension of D for LDC with 
`extern(Objective-C)` support.

Thanks again for you answer.

- Rizo
Apr 18 2012
parent Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2012-04-18 16:39, Rizo Isrof wrote:


 Thank you for such a detailed overview of the existing approaches - it
 helped me a lot to understand the theory. As you suggested, I will
 probably use a modified version of the compiler for tests. But in order
 to fully understand the implementation details I will try to write my
 own extension of D for LDC with `extern(Objective-C)` support.

 Thanks again for you answer.


DMD and LDC uses the same frontend so you could study the DMD fork if 
you want to. The glue code (connecting the frontend and backend) would 
be unique to each compiler.

How about contributing to the DMD fork instead and try to finish it?

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Apr 18 2012