Re: [boost] boost lib must provide C interface?!

Subject: Re: [boost] boost lib must provide C interface?!
From: Artyom (artyomtnk_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-05-13 08:50:07

> From: Oliver Kowalke <oliver.kowalke_at_[hidden]>
> Hi,
> 
> can a boost C++ library be required/forced to provide a C  API?

As somebody who loves and uses C as well as C++ I can tell you:

These languages are too different and what you asking as same as to
ask from Java library to provide C++ API (even the last is simpler :-))

However if you ask if there is a good framework/set of libraries
for easy C development, there are.

There two big, widely deployed and uses libraries that do
very fine job proving a good set of general functions:

1. GLib: threading, io, unicode, regular expression, networking,
   containers and more. (LGPL)

2. APR (Apache Portable Runtime) a huge set of functions like
   networking, memory, containers and more. (Apache license)

So basically if you are looking for a set of C libraries
that provide good functionality (like Boost) then these
libraries are your friends.

However if you looking libraries for specific tasks there
are plenty:

- Networking - libevent and some other friends
- Threading pthread API (pthread-win32 for windows)
- Regular Expressions - PCRE
- Unicode - ICU
- SQL - libdbi and some others
- XML - libxml2

And more and more.

So basically there are "Boost-for-C" libraries, they just
not called Boost but rather Glib, APR :-)

(And BTW some of them reacher then Boost)

Artyom