can you interop cpp & go
Can C Code Be Ported To Go Quite Easily?
performance - Call C function from Golang - Stack Overflow
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I’m teaching myself operating systems, doing so through OSTEP (it’s a book, acronym is common knowledge so I’m using without expansion). There are many C examples, and Python examples, and they help to solidify OS concepts.
One way I’m thinking I can take my learning a bit further, while also learning about some of Go’s important features, is porting the C and Python code over to Go.
But porting isn’t a trivial process. For example, porting C code to Ruby would be, and pardon my French, fucking horrible. But Go shares a lot of similarities with C, so I’m thinking maybe it could be an easier process, and maybe it could be a useful way to learn.
I also know some Go, enough to be productive but not enough to claim I can write production code well — Go is my hobby language. So given this information, and for those with the background I’m trying to develop, do you think what I am proposing would be worth the additional effort?
Update: I've succeeded in linking a small test C++ class with Go
If you wrap you C++ code with a C interface you should be able to call your library with cgo (see the example of gmp in $GOROOT/misc/cgo/gmp).
I'm not sure if the idea of a class in C++ is really expressible in Go, as it doesn't have inheritance.
Here's an example:
I have a C++ class defined as:
// foo.hpp
class cxxFoo {
public:
int a;
cxxFoo(int _a):a(_a){};
~cxxFoo(){};
void Bar();
};
// foo.cpp
#include <iostream>
#include "foo.hpp"
void
cxxFoo::Bar(void){
std::cout<<this->a<<std::endl;
}
which I want to use in Go. I'll use the C interface
// foo.h
#ifdef __cplusplus
extern "C" {
#endif
typedef void* Foo;
Foo FooInit(void);
void FooFree(Foo);
void FooBar(Foo);
#ifdef __cplusplus
}
#endif
(I use a void* instead of a C struct so the compiler knows the size of Foo)
The implementation is:
//cfoo.cpp
#include "foo.hpp"
#include "foo.h"
Foo FooInit()
{
cxxFoo * ret = new cxxFoo(1);
return (void*)ret;
}
void FooFree(Foo f)
{
cxxFoo * foo = (cxxFoo*)f;
delete foo;
}
void FooBar(Foo f)
{
cxxFoo * foo = (cxxFoo*)f;
foo->Bar();
}
with all that done, the Go file is:
// foo.go
package foo
// #include "foo.h"
import "C"
import "unsafe"
type GoFoo struct {
foo C.Foo;
}
func New()(GoFoo){
var ret GoFoo;
ret.foo = C.FooInit();
return ret;
}
func (f GoFoo)Free(){
C.FooFree(unsafe.Pointer(f.foo));
}
func (f GoFoo)Bar(){
C.FooBar(unsafe.Pointer(f.foo));
}
The makefile I used to compile this was:
// makefile
TARG=foo
CGOFILES=foo.go
include $(GOROOT)/src/Make.$(GOARCH)
include $(GOROOT)/src/Make.pkg
foo.o:foo.cpp
g++ $(_CGO_CFLAGS_$(GOARCH)) -fPIC -O2 -o $@ -c $(CGO_CFLAGS) $<
cfoo.o:cfoo.cpp
g++ $(_CGO_CFLAGS_$(GOARCH)) -fPIC -O2 -o $@ -c $(CGO_CFLAGS) $<
CGO_LDFLAGS+=-lstdc++
$(elem)_foo.so: foo.cgo4.o foo.o cfoo.o
gcc $(_CGO_CFLAGS_$(GOARCH)) $(_CGO_LDFLAGS_$(GOOS)) -o $@ $^ $(CGO_LDFLAGS)
Try testing it with:
// foo_test.go
package foo
import "testing"
func TestFoo(t *testing.T){
foo := New();
foo.Bar();
foo.Free();
}
You'll need to install the shared library with make install, then run make test. Expected output is:
gotest
rm -f _test/foo.a _gotest_.6
6g -o _gotest_.6 foo.cgo1.go foo.cgo2.go foo_test.go
rm -f _test/foo.a
gopack grc _test/foo.a _gotest_.6 foo.cgo3.6
1
PASS
Seems that currently SWIG is best solution for this:
https://www.swig.org/Doc4.0/Go.html
It supports inheritance and even allows to subclass C++ class with Go struct so when overridden methods are called in C++ code, Go code is fired.
Section about C++ in Go FAQ is updated and now mentions SWIG and no longer says "because Go is garbage-collected it will be unwise to do so, at least naively".