Re: [Caml-list] any automated FFI bindings generators?

[Gerd Stolpmann <info@gerd-stolpmann.de>]

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Am Donnerstag, den 30.01.2014, 13:01 +0200 schrieb Ömer Sinan Ağacan:
> Hi all,
> 
> I want to be able to use some very big C libraries from OCaml and I
> want to automate process of writing bindings as much as possible. What
> are my options for this? Do we have any tools to generate bindings?

I ran into this question a couple of months ago. The options we have are
not really good (e.g. I tried camlidl before). Because of this I wrote
my own utility that is special-cased for my application (bindings of
gnutls):

https://godirepo.camlcity.org/wwwsvn/branches/onet4/code/tools/stubgen.ml?rev=1935&root=lib-ocamlnet2&view=auto

See here for an example how to use it:

https://godirepo.camlcity.org/wwwsvn/branches/onet4/code/src/nettls-gnutls/?root=lib-ocamlnet2

especially gnutls.descr. Basically, this a little OCaml program, and by
calling a function (called "standard") you generate a binding, e.g. 

standard "gnutls_alert_description_t gnutls_alert_get (gnutls_session_t
session)"

The syntax in the string mimicks C header declarations, and can use
special data types like ztstr (for zero-terminated string).

I haven't found time to make something more systematic out of this idea.
Currently, the strong point of this method is that it is quite easy to
adapt it to your own needs.

Gerd
-- 
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Gerd Stolpmann, Darmstadt, Germany    gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de
Creator of GODI and camlcity.org.
Contact details:        http://www.camlcity.org/contact.html
Company homepage:       http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de
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