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Comments for Josh the Outspoken (12 unread)

Comment on Gazelle/upb status and plans (aka: On Releasing) by Dennis

Posted: December 31st, 2009, 9:03am MST by Dennis

You should name it “Gazelle Forever”.

I kid
Comment on Torn over the C++ question by blankthemuffin

Posted: December 27th, 2009, 4:04pm MST by blankthemuffin

I vote to stick with C for another reason, integration with other languages. If your project is a nice C library, it’s vastly easier for people using other languages, C, Python, whatever, to interface with your library rather than having to re-implement it.

C++ is imo an awful choice for a library because it ends up restricting this to other things written in C++ (unless of course you wrap it up in a C abi but that is messy).

I’d prefer a base in C with a C++ wrapper as required.
Comment on Torn over the C++ question by nobody

Posted: December 14th, 2009, 4:09pm MST by nobody

GCC 4.5 should get link-time optimization which will hopefully help binary size a lot. ultimately though, i still find myself reaching for C, for the ease of binding to other languages and the smaller size. i still like to keep my code C++ compatible and run it through the C++ compiler occasionally though, just because it’s much stricter on typing.
Comment on Torn over the C++ question by George P.

Posted: December 8th, 2009, 7:59pm MST by George P.

I have a hard time accepting the comment that C++ compilers aren’t very good at keeping things small. Which compiler have you used? I would agree that C++ nuances are complicated and that you need to read volumes of books to better grasp the details of optimization.
Comment on Porting upb to C++? by Rehno Lindeque

Posted: December 6th, 2009, 4:50am MST by Rehno Lindeque

I’ve also been lazily contemplating upb for use in my projects. Since I tend to write my code in strange languages like D and Haskell, I’ll second the other’s comments! I would not mind having a thin C++ wrapper though.
Comment on Torn over the C++ question by Alejandro M.

Posted: December 3rd, 2009, 7:47am MST by Alejandro M.

great choice!
Comment on Porting upb to C++? by Sam Quigley

Posted: December 2nd, 2009, 12:52am MST by Sam Quigley

Have you checked with the security team about this yet? C++ might reduce the number of potentially unsafe manual casting that goes on in the code, but it also introduces a whole host of (often very subtle) security risks of its own… (For example, see: [chargen.matasano.com] and some of the links there) Depending on how much you’re planning on changing — and depending on your security folks — it might well be faster to tighten up the current codebase than to rewrite it. (It’s been a little while since I looked at the code, and I certainly haven’t tried to do a formal review, but I didn’t notice too many scary things going on in there…)

On a more selfish note — I too was eyeing upb for use in a (pure C) project of mine, and would just as soon see it stay C… So take my comments with a grain of salt.

-sq
Comment on Porting upb to C++? by Alejandro M.

Posted: December 1st, 2009, 10:59am MST by Alejandro M.

assuming the generated C code is good, why not? thanks!
Comment on Porting upb to C++? by Josh

Posted: December 1st, 2009, 10:55am MST by Josh

@Alejandro: Wow, I didn’t realize there was already someone wanting to use upb on an embedded platform! I definitely want to keep supporting your use case if I can. I think the best way forward will be for me to get a C++ to C translator like Comeau C++. Then I can keep writing in C++, but ship C files that you can build with a plain C compiler. Do you think that will work for you?
Comment on Porting upb to C++? by Alejandro M.

Posted: December 1st, 2009, 10:02am MST by Alejandro M.

@Josh: Hi! You mentioned my reason… I work on a CXX-free embedded controller. Moving from ASN.1 to protocol buffer at IPC (hate threads) level thanks to your awesome upb and I was starting to write the Lua bindings to finish the migration integrating the http front-end and some Lua based helpers running inside the controller. So porting ucb to C++ because will hit me… badly … your implementation is great!. I understand porting it to C++ will save you some lines… but maybe some refactoring can help to reduce the complexity without having to switch to C++? you can do all the bindings you aim keeping it in C… with all it’s current benefits
Comment on Porting upb to C++? by Josh

Posted: December 1st, 2009, 9:30am MST by Josh

@Alejandro: If you want to influence my decision, you should tell me why you don’t want me to. I definitely have resisted, but practical reasons are demanding that I do. But maybe you are thinking of practical reasons that I’m missing.
Comment on Porting upb to C++? by Alejandro M.

Posted: December 1st, 2009, 7:49am MST by Alejandro M.

please don’t :’(