From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2002-09-10T04:02:08+09:00
Subject: Re: HOWTO create Ruby bindings for a library

Lyle Johnson wrote:
> Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:
> 
>> I have this library which I would like to use with Ruby. How do I do it?
> 
> 
> Tom has already mentioned Ruby/DL in a separate response. Two other 
> choices you might want to consider are Joel VanderWerf's CGenerator 
> module (http://redshift.sourceforge.net/cgen) and SWIG 
> (http://www.swig.org). If it's straight C code in the library I think 
> Ruby/DL might be a good choice and CGenerator possibly better; I haven't 
> used either of them. If you're dealing with C++ code, I think SWIG might 
> be the right choice.

If you have the source, C or C++, I would try SWIG first. I haven't used 
it, but from what I understand, you won't have to modify the library 
much, just add some auxilliary interface description files.

CGenerator doesn't really help much with an existing library, unless you 
want to do a lot of cutting and pasting into your ruby program. If you 
are developing a C library from scratch, or writing a ruby program that 
needs to generate and execute C code on the fly (e.g., for math 
expressions), then CGenerator is worth a look.