Re: language bindings (fs-independent quotas)

[David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost>]

On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 09:07:05AM -0600, Eric Haszlakiewicz wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 03:51:52PM +0100, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 01:02:33PM +0000, David Holland wrote:
> > > Writing language bindings for a simple and straightforward library is
> > > a simple and straightforward undertaking.
> > 
> > OK, so prove it by writing a perl binding format :)
> > I've never written a language binding, so it's not going to be
> > straightforward for me anyway.
> 
> It's probably not as hard as you think:
> http://www.swig.org/tutorial.html
> 
> See especially the "SWIG for the truly lazy" section, where you basically
> just need to point it at a header file.
> Of course, this will result in a rather raw binding, and often times it can
> be useful to customize things to make them more natural for a particular
> language.

I don't think it matters whether it is simple and straightforward to
create a language binding or not.

The advantage to using some standard format for quotas, be it
tab-delimited tables or plists, is that if you know the standard tools
for that format, you can whip up scripts that process it in useful ways.
No language bindings necessary.

Nhat Minh Lê made a great start on stream-oriented XML tools during his
GSoC 2009 project.  IMO, time spent fighting over plists v. "simple and
straightforward libraries" is time better spent creating decent tools
for current formats like XML & JSON.

Dave

-- 
David Young
dyoung%pobox.com@localhost    Urbana, IL    (217) 721-9981