MImiguel_martin·Sep 1, 2025
This is a bit controversial, but in my opinion, just manually write bindings for the API surface you care about. There are tools to help automate the process ([c2nim](https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim), [futhark](https://github.com/PMunch/futhark)), but these tools are mostly for C.
Theoretically if you want to import a large C++ API (e.g. if you were importing Google's C++ codebase*), you could do so with libclang. I was working on an alternative to c2nim that supported Objective-c and C++, which used libclang, but it's currently in my project graveyard. If you're expecting a @cImport from Zig, then the closest you have to that is tools mentioned above to help with the process.
* to be clear, I understand why Google does not want to use Nim instead of creating a new language (Carbon). i.e. readable code output, full control of the compil
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er and language design, etc.
The amount of manual work to write bindings is minimal, i.e. you can do so simply by declaring a prototype for a procedure and then appending `{.importcpp, header: "<path>".}`, the same for types. And then compile with `nim cpp`.
Compare the way you wrap libraries in Python, Nim requires so much less work - and yet the Python community wraps every C/C++ library you can think of. Again, in my opinion, if you really want a library: wrap it yourself (ideally the subset you need) or rewrite it in Nim.
Also, most of the libraries you have listed have bindings already:
- Qt: https://github.com/jerous86/nimqt or [seaqt](https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/12709)
- ImGUI: https://github.com/nimgl/imgui
- SFML: https://github.com/oprypin/nim-csfml
- SDL: https://github.com/nim-lang/sdl2
- sokol: https://github.com/floooh/sokol-nim
If there's a popular enough C or C++ library, it's probably already wrapped, especially within the gamedev community.