c2nim

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.

get C compiler. Technically you can, but you have to use backtracking.

com/timotheecour/D_vs_nim . There are many choices in Nim. Sometimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice can be a real problem - in both software or in life - and at many, many levels. :) I am not trying to challenge your own priorities or push choices on you, but to add information others may be unaware of.

the "codegen of bindings for interop from C/C++ headers" problem. The first thing I did was reach out to people who spent months or years on this problem and ask them what worked and what didn't. (I had no clue where to start and figured lots of smart people have done this before) Consistently, what I heard was (roughly): "If you want to programmatically interact with information about C/C++ units, you want to use the LLVM/clang ecosystem. You're going to think you can do what you want from 'libclang', the C API. But what you'll find out after sinking months of your time is that libclang DOESN'T expose enough info about the AST for certain scenarios, and there is ABSOLUTELY ZERO WAY to get it. So you'll need to use libTooling, which is C++, and has the full AST available." I've found this to be true, with the exception that a few people have taken to "augmenting" libclang with extra bindings to libTooling functions or other C++-only methods. Most notably is Tanner Gooding & Co's "libClangSharp" from the Microsoft "ClangSharp" project, and PathogenDavid's "Biohazrd" libraries (which again are a sort of enhanced fork based on ClangSharp): https://github.com/microsoft/ClangSharp # See "/sources/libClangSharp" https://github.com/InfectedLibraries/Biohazrd Okay so with that out of the way, my long-winded point is: - c2nim is a custom C lexer/parser written in Nim, with zero support for C++ - nimterop uses tree-sitter, which isn't bad but it's certainly no "libTooling" Neither tool supports C++, and edgecases (in either text or syntax) will still outright break them/they don't know how to handle. I had one where an unprintable unicode character caused c2nim to freeze indefinitely. Nimterop is also dead as far as I understand -- last active commit period was about ~1 yr ago. I'm hard to convince to the path to success here doesn't involve leaning on the collective decades of man-hours of engineering put into clang/LLVM. C++ is a nightmare of a specification, a veritable cluster-fuck of complexity. --- As a side note, I've had the opportunity to speak to one of the Nim maintainers (Timothee Cour) about this and the future here, and he's expressed interest in having a good story for easy type-safe C++ interop via binding generation and also believes it's important. So hopefully this is something we'll see pop up eventually. Maybe I'll take a crack at myself using ClangSharp (or it's XML output format, using TypeScript/Python to munge the XML and spit out code) but there aren't enough hours in a day to do all the interesting things =(

not a fundamental requirement or speed limitation. In my experience the default (thread-local refc + cycle collection) GC is very performant already, but it's straightforward to write code that works entirely on the stack, or create objects that wrap manual heap allocs, or use custom external memory allocators. Passing `--gc:none` removes the GC entirely from the compilation target, for example if you're working with very constrained embedded devices with the caveat that less of the stdlib is available (currently). The ARC GC (doesn't handle cycles unlike it's sibling ORC) is aiming to be lean enough to be used in hard realtime and memory constrained embedded systems. For hard realtime though I'd expect most people would just manually manage their types anyway on the heap or stack. If you're doing interop between Nim and C++ and want Nim's GC to manage types that you're passing directly to pure C++ code, you can tell the GC that the data is still being used with GC_Ref() or not with GC_Unref(). There are a few libraries for C/C++ interop, such as: https://github.com/nimterop/nimterop Personally in this case I would probably just manually allocate memory memory in Nim or C++ and not use GC'd types across boundaries for clarity if nothing else, still it's an option if your design requires it. Finally, there is a tool to help auto-translate C/C++ to Nim with the c2nim tool: https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim and docs: https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim/blob/master/doc/c2nim.rst

m interface code from existing C header files: https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim