Re^2: Developing Perl against proprietary interfaces

[wade]

Instead of linking your C with Perl using raw XS, you might consider http://www.swig.org/. It builds the XS for you and, if you so choose, you can convert directly to Java. I've used SWIG before and it's really easy.

[samtregar]

You might, but I wouldn't. I've also used SWIG and I found it to be mostly a waste of time. It offers something I don't need (bindings for multiple languages) in exchange for greatly increased complexity. That complexity hides the actual details of the XS interface that you'll need to effectively debug your code. And you will need to debug your code!

-sam

[wade]

My approach (which, admittedly, won't work for everybody) was to debug the two sides, separately. I got the Perl working with the C calls stubbed-out and I got the C working with a test harness on that side. At that point, I plugged the bad boys together and it worked like a charm.

Of course, YMMV.

[wade]

Yikes! Was this node down-voted because somebody really doesn't like SWIG, because I defended my original post, because I elided the complexities of the interface, or for some other reason? I didn't mean to step on toes, here.