[Haskell-cafe] Wrapping a C++ library

[Richard Lewis]

Hi there,

There is a C++ library for which I'm working on an FFI wrapper. I've
written a translation unit which defines several functions with an
extern "C" API. Each of the functions does a little bit of C++ to
operate the third party library, but the point is that I now have a C
API that I can wrap with the FFI.

The next thing I did was to try and get Cabal to compile this
translation unit for me. I eventually hacked together a Setup.hs that
I barely understand that calls gcc to compile the .cpp file and then
calls `ar` to, um, well do whatever it is that ar does with .o files,
make some sort of archive, or something.

Next, I need to get my hsc file (in which I define some imported
functions and some data types with Storable instances for shovelling
data through the FFI) to compile. This file uses the hsc2hs #include
macro to include the .h file of my translation unit. In turn, that .h
includes some of the C++ header files from the third party, and
eventually an STL header: vector. At this point, the compiler, gcc,
complains that it can't find vector.

The gcc command that hsc2hs (I think?) is creating does not include
-lstdc++, and nethier does it use g++, either of which would, I think,
result in a successful compilation of the hsc2hs .c file.

In my cabal file I have:

  extra-libraries: stdc++
  ghc-options: -pgml g++ -Wall

But these don't seem to fix anything. Perhaps they don't have any
effect on how hsc2hs operates?

There's a specific question here which goes something like: how do I
get hsc2hs to compile code that uses STL headers?

But there's also a more general question as to whether my whole
approach of creating an extern "C" wrapper is actually going to work?

Any answers would be very appreciated.

Richard