KUkuschku·Aug 29, 2024
> There is also an exercise in writing JNI bindings. Or maybe using Java FFM now which still requires you to go through separate tooling, build stage, deal with off-heap memory management API and still does not change the performance profile significantly. There's a reason it is recommended to avoid native dependencies in Java and port them instead (even with performance sacrifices).* Green Threads will only exacerbate this problem.
I'm not sure if you've used JNA before? That's been the state of the art for many years: https://github.com/java-native-access/jna
public interface MSVCRT extends Library {
public static MSVCRT Instance = (MSVCRT) Native.load("msvcrt", MSVCRT.class);
void printf(String format, Object... args);
}
public class HelloWorld {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Read the rest
MSVCRT.Instance.printf("Hello, World\n");
for (int i=0;i < args.length;i++) {
MSVCRT.Instance.printf("Argument %d: %s\n", i, args[i]);
}
}
}
> "C++ is more popular for systems programming"
Sure, and it's got many great libraries – but actually using those is horrible.
You're absolutely right about Rust though. crates.io and cargo are amazing tools with a great ecosystem.
The primary issue I've got with the .NET ecosystem is actually closely related to that. Because it's so easy to import native libraries, often there's no .NET version of a library and everyone uses the native one instead. But if I actually want to build the native one I've got to work with ancient C++ build systems and all the arcane trouble they bring with them.
> Same applies to "packages that bundle native libraries".
You seem to have misunderstood. The fun part of the maven ecosystem is that a dependency doesn't have to be a jar, it can also be an XML that resolves to one or multiple dependencies depending on the environment.