[rasterman]

We may have come up with an alternative for bindings - at least for EFL, where we now generate the C API from an IDL that expresses classes, inheritance, events (signals/slots), etc. so our C API is pushed out by code gen tools and we just fill in the functions, and right now we support automatically generating C++, JS and LuaJIT bindings out of the box whenever you type "make" on the toolkit. We're going for "full bindings with zero maintenance overhead EXCEPT for fixing bugs in the generators or the initial work for adding a new language binding tool". At least the plan is to have language bindings "first class citizens" all coming out of core development (with yes, the core still in C - that's how we roll). Our cross-platform support hasn't been great and originally it was never intended/planned, but now we do port to Windows, Mac and Linux (X11 + Wayland), other Unixen... sure the ports need more work/maintenance and to be made easier and less prone to breaking, and we don't have iOS, android or Windows Phone ports (and no obscure OS's like Symbian, QNX etc.), so that's something to fix, but we're shifting design to push portability first and foremost and that allows for OS ports, so maybe this will pan out. There are Python bindings waiting int he wings that will come in once we're done with our interfaces work and the core OO layer is stable (not changing/breaking), so that language will get added. given the range of languages above and Python I think that means that adding more languages shouldn't be hard as most core concepts have been covered. Just FYI on "pick up favorite language and write cross-platform app".

[daurnimator]

> LuaJIT bindings

Well... somewhat. FWIW I was present at q66's talk at the lua workshop last year (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_hlbjj_9-Q). From what I recall it was more of a full application framework rather than a library usable from existing processes.

I did try to give them a go at some point, but could never get things working.

Aside from this, the reliance on luajit makes this a no-go for me. (though perhaps you can use luaffi (https://github.com/facebook/luaffifb) to alleviate this?)

[rasterman]

well it's a framework like Qt is... :) or like GTK+ and glib and then some. so if these were acceptable for bindings if they were maintained/up to date then EFL would be.

But yeah - we bound to LuaJIT because of performance and FFI. Technically bindings could generate C code for PUC Lua too. We generate C++ for v8 for JS, so it's possible but not done. My point was that we're making bindings a first class citizen part of development of the core. maybe this will fill in the gaps others have tried to fill before?

[daurnimator]

> well it's a framework like Qt is... :) or like GTK+ and glib and then some. so if these were acceptable for bindings if they were maintained/up to date then EFL would be.

Languages want a something that can act as a library; not something that completely dictates the structure of your program. e.g. you must be able to specify your own main loop.

Glib does allow this, however the gobject introspection for it is completely broken. I haven't looked into it for Qt for a while

[rasterman]

node.js insists on its own mainloop. python is agnostic. efl already integrates with node's libuv usage and glib mainloop. really gtk requires a glib mainloop. you make glib integrate/sit on top of something elses and efl did the same thing.

[daurnimator]

You're saying you don't make efl run on top of your own mainloop, but instead integrate with ecore? Isn't ecore part of efl anyway?

Either way, is the mainloop-integration part exposed in the bindings? `grep -r main_loop_iter /usr/share/elua` doesn't show me any results.

I just installed 'efl' (on archlinux), and I get a binary "elua" (which is a conflicting name with the famous project http://www.eluaproject.net/) which wants to be my executable. How can I just use my already installed luajit? Why would you even encourage a executable for this?

[rasterman]

well we already did the integration. it doesn't need exposing. it's meant to be handled by the bindings for that runtime environment specifically or is just always available. so it merges currently with glib mainloop and with libuv so if you run the ecore mainloop you ALSO have (optionally as long as efl is compiled with these) a glib and a libuv loop too merged together as one, so they all are then compatible and work at the same time. yes - it requires the app spin up the ecore mainloop (it actually is the efl.loop now) instead of another, but existing code that uses the 'native mainloop' for that runtime will continue to happily work just as it was working before in that runtime env, but as lua never provided a mainloop, then we're it along with glib if you want and/or libuv. the integration is done down in the c code for the efl loop. for lua there IS not native mainloop as there is no native lua runtime (beyond a sample lua cmdline), and by this i contrast it to something like node.js. we provide one (elua) that will load in the bindings stubs for you and thus work. we do this because lua itself unlike something like node.js or python doesn't push the idea of "a single lua executable to run all lua runtimes". it has demo/sample/test executors, but it is built as a library primarily to then be embedded into another runtime. we happen to provide a guaranteed runtime binary too.

there are very good reasons for this for the future, like being able to package up applications into archives (like .apk for android, .jar or java etc.) as we already have a whole archive library (eet) that handles random access read (and decompress), so this would allow for lua apps to be shipped as single file archives with all script AND data files (images, theme data, videos, icons and more) in a single file just dropped into a directory with no extra dependencies or tools needed. to do this we need something like elua. our whole intent is to actually become a portable cross-platform toolkit where you do not need external plugins, binaries, libraries and can build a portable application that "just works" on multiple OS's without needing to instruct people on how to install 3rd party dependencies.

also so far we've supported both luajit and puc lua (and intend to drop puc lua because of ffi and a few other niggles) so this is a big problem as to which executable then gets used? different names. lua va luajit. how do you run things "by default" and know it will work and which one will be installed? part of our build uses elua and lua scripts to generate documentation so how could we run our doc generator when we don't know what executor is there on the host? we'd have to add more detection and have file.lua.in files where #!/bin/whatever is replaced with the correct lua etc. ... not pretty where now #!/bin/env elua will do fine.