Re: [Swarm-Support] compile with objective-c++

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Gennady Telegin wrote:
> is it possible to compile Swarm with Objective-C++? 
I took a look at this.   Basically I just tried your (apparent) approach 
with heatbugs.
That is, to use an ordinary build of Swarm (without Objective C++), but 
build the simulation itself using the new compiler.  There's no real 
reason this shouldn't work, besides the things we discussed, and no 
penalty I can think of for not rebuilding Swarm itself using the C++ 
compiler.

Anyway, I made a handful of changes that at least get me a working 
heatbugs and mousetrap using:

make OBJC='gcc -x objective-c++'

(an alternative to renaming the files to .mm)

The changes were nothing more than removing use of C++ reserved words 
from Swarm headers (e.g. "class" and "bool") and adding C++ extern "C" 
for those functions that are public parts of the Swarm API (e.g. 
initSwarm, serialization functions, probe creation functions).

For those not familiar with Objective C++, the idea is that Objective C 
and C++ classes are completely orthogonal, so that performance-critical 
functions can be C++ classes and objects requiring more dynamism can be 
Objective C. 


Thanks for the suggestion, Gennady.  Let me know if you have problems 
with your model.  I didn't test any farther than to ensure existing 
Objective C models could be recompiled with Objective C++ -- I didn't 
try embedding C++ classes, but I'd be rather astonished if it didn't work.

The changes are checked into the Swarm Savannah CVS repository.  I used 
Fedora 7t2, not Debian, so some tweaks may still be needed.

Marcus