c2nim
wuffs
c2nim | wuffs | |
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7 | 83 | |
493 | 3,768 | |
0.6% | 1.9% | |
4.1 | 9.4 | |
7 months ago | 15 days ago | |
Nim | C | |
MIT License | GNU General Public License v3.0 or later |
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c2nim
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I learned 7 programming languages so you don't have to
Also on the game development front, I maintain a raylib wrapper https://github.com/planetis-m/naylib As long utilities like c2nim https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim exist, it's trivial to create bindings of C/C++ libraries. One thing I want to experiment more is making it more automatic by writing a callback exposed by c2nim that transform the generated code using Nim's AST. But regardless in that project I was able to write safe language abstractions on top of the bindings that provide a more native experience. It has scope-based memory management, generics and ... function overloading.
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The way integrate Rust into Nim
Rust also has a library called safer_ffi that makes FFI easier, and I tried to use that, but the library seems to be immature, and I could not get arguments in Rust functions. If this library can be used properly, it will be possible to output C header files from Rust functions and automatically generate Nim interface functions from C header files using c2nim. We look forward to further development of this feature.
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Checked C
Well I'm 99.5% certain at least. Even now I'm uncertain of the C syntax. And I've not been bold enough to test 3rd order C function pointers. I figure that's probably C code you don't wanna touch if possible.
https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim/blob/11f2c5363dfe7e8c7c8ce...
The other annoying one is that "signed" and "unsigned" are basically adjectives, but "long" can be both a type and a modifier. So it's difficult to parse unless you're the target C compiler. Technically you can, but you have to use backtracking.
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Nim -- a modern "glue" language like Python
c2nim is a tool to translate ANSI C code to Nim. The output is human-readable Nim code that is meant to be tweaked by hand after the translation process. If you are tired of wrapping C library, you can try futhark which supports "simply import C header files directly into Nim". Similar to futhark, cinterop allows one to interop with C/C++ code without having to create wrappers. nimLUA is a glue code generator to bind Nim and Lua together using Nim's powerful macro. nimpy and nimporter is a bridge between Nim and Python. rnim is a bridge between R and Nim. nimjl is a bridge between Nim and Julia! Last but not least, genny generates a shared library and bindings for many languages such as Python, Node.js, C.
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Genny – Generate Nim library bindings for many languages
Now if only a full binding generator for C and C++ headers to Nim was done, the language would really be cooking!
"What do you mean, Nim has two of these already?"
Yeah, I know, and -- not to hurt anyone's feelings -- but: they kind of suck. And there's no way I see them able to be extended to do the job fully, based on the way they're currently built.
Those are some bold claims to make!
So before I get stoned to death (no offense to the authors, I am grateful that they exist and have used them both) let me attempt an explanation and back up these statements.
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To start off, the two tools available are "c2nim" and "nimterop". c2nim is a Nim official library, while nimterop is a community library.
https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim
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ffipf - quickly jump to file in a project with a native module
Yes. Nim compiles to C and has a lot of features for interacting with C code. You can easily call C routines from Nim and Nim functions from C. There's a bit of a ceremony you need to go through, but most of it can be automated with c2nim tool: https://github.com/nim-lang/c2nim
- C2nim: A tool to translate ANSI C code to Nim
wuffs
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Still no love for JPEG XL: Browser maker love-in snubs next-gen image format
Maybe this is what you are looking for:
https://github.com/google/wuffs
"Wuffs is a memory-safe programming language (and a standard library written in that language) for Wrangling Untrusted File Formats Safely."
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4-year campaign backdoored iPhones using possibly the most advanced exploit
It could author its format parsers in https://github.com/google/wuffs, and make them BSD-like open source to maximize adoption.
An even bigger change: It could allow users to choose their iMessage client freely. Why not open up the protocol? I’m sure a security focused client would be popular and in the grand scheme of things easy to author.
Perhaps they could open up more of the OS and apps. Perhaps their claims about the security of users and the App Store is kind of BS.
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Just about every Windows/Linux device vulnerable to new LogoFAIL firmware attack
This is one of the reasons I'm a big fan of wuffs[0] - it specifically targets dealing with formats like pictures, safely, and the result drops in to a C codebase to make the compat/migration story easy.
[0] https://github.com/google/wuffs
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Google assigns a CVE for libwebp and gives it a 10.0 score
There are already huffman-decoding and some parts of webp algorithms in https://github.com/google/wuffs (language that finds missing bounds checks during compilations). In contrary, according to readme, this language allows to write more optimized code (compared to C). WEBP decoding is stated as a midterm target in the roadmap.
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The WebP 0day
Specifically, since performance is crucial for this type of work, it should be written in WUFFS. WUFFS doesn't emit bounds checks (as Java does and as Rust would where it's unclear why something should be in bounds at runtime) it just rejects programs where it can't see why the indexes are in-bounds.
https://github.com/google/wuffs
You can explicitly write the same checks and meet this requirement, but chances are since you believe you're producing a high performance piece of software which doesn't need checks you'll instead be pulled up by the fact the WUFFS tooling won't accept your code and discover you got it wrong.
This is weaker than full blown formal verification, but not for the purpose we care about in program safety, thus a big improvement on humans writing LGTM.
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What If OpenDocument Used SQLite?
> parsing encoded files tends to introduce vulnerabilities
If we are talking about binary formats, now there are systematic solutions like https://github.com/google/wuffs that protect against vulnerabilities. But SQLite is not just a format - it's an evolving ecosystem with constantly added features. And the most prominent issue was not even in core, it was in FTS3. What will SQLite add next? More json-related functions? Maybe BSON? It is useful, but does not help in this situation.
Regarding traces, there are many forensics tools and even books about forensic analysis of SQLite databases. In well-designed format such tools should not exist in the first place. This is hard requirement: if it requires rewriting the whole file - then so be it.
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CVE-2023-4863: Heap buffer overflow in WebP (Chrome)
I agree that Wuffs [1] would have been a very good alternative! If it can be made more generally. AFAIK Wuffs is still very limited, in particular it never allows dynamic allocation. Many formats, including those supported by Wuffs the library, need dynamic allocation, so Wuffs code has to be glued with unverified non-Wuffs code [2]. This only works with simpler formats.
[1] https://github.com/google/wuffs/blob/main/doc/wuffs-the-lang...
[2] https://github.com/google/wuffs/blob/main/doc/note/memory-sa...
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NSO Group iPhone Zero-Click, Zero-Day Exploit Captured in the Wild
There are efforts to do that, notably https://github.com/google/wuffs
RLBox is another interesting option that lets you sandbox C/C++ code.
I think the main reason is that security is one of those things that people don't care about until it is too late to change. They get to the point of having a fast PDF library in C++ that has all the features. Then they realise that they should have written it in a safer language but by that point it means a complete rewrite.
The same reason not enough people use Bazel. By the time most people realise they need it, you've already implemented a huge build system using Make or whatever.
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Ask HN: Wuffs Examples for Text Files?
I finally have time to try out wuffs (https://github.com/google/wuffs), which I first heard about here on HN. I want to develop a low-level tokenizer for SDF files, a small-molecule structure file format which started in the 1970s, with lots of, let's call it 'heritage'. Wuffs' ability to process near the data, with a coroutine-like interface, seems like a good fit.
I got the "hello-wuffs-c" example to work, which took some tinkering (see wuffs issue #24). That reads a single string and returns an unsigned int. Despite looking at the example implementations for json parsing, I can't figure out how to go from that example to something which handles multiple input buffer blocks, with string tokens that might straddle two buffers.
Nor could I find third-party examples of people using wuffs-the-language beyond basic experimentation for simple binary data. The handful of non-trivial examples I found only used wuffs-the-library, as a vendored component in a larger project.
The lack of wuffs-the-language use after several years seems a strong sign that I shouldn't look to wuffs for my project. Given the 'workarounds' in #24 are still present after 3 years, it doesn't even seem that widely internally at Google.
Does anyone here have experience to share, or pointers to related projects?
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FaaS in Go with WASM, WASI and Rust
Here's an off-topic answer.
Depends on what you want your toy language to do and what sort of runtime support you'd like to lean on.
JVM is pretty good for a lot of script-y languages, does impose overhead of having a JVM around. Provides GC, Threads, Reflection, consistent semantics. Tons of tools, libraries, support.
WebAssembly is constrained (for running-in-a-browser safety reasons) but then you get to run your code in a browser, or as a service, etc, and Other People are working hard on the problem of getting your WA to go fast. That used to be a big reason for using JVM, but it turns out that Security Is Darn Hard.
I have used C in the (distant) past as an IL, and that works up to a point, implementing garbage collection can be a pain if that's a thing that you want. C compilers have had a lot of work on them over the years, and you also have access to some low-level stuff, so if you were E.G. trying to come up with a little language that had super-good performance, C might be a good choice. (See also, [Wuffs](https://github.com/google/wuffs), by Nigel Tao et al at Google).
A suggestion, if you do target C -- don't work too hard to find isomorphisms between C's data structures and YourToyLang's data structures. Back around 1990, I did my C-generating compiler for Modula-3, and a friend at Xerox PARC used C as a target for Cedar Mesa, and Hans used it in a lower-level way (so I was mapping between M-3 records and C structs, for example, Hans was not) and the lower-level way worked better -- i.e., I chose poorly. It worked, but lower-level worked better.
If you are targeting a higher-level language, Rust and Go both seem like interesting options to me. Both have the disadvantage that they are still changing slightly but you get interesting "services" from the underlying VM -- for Rust, the borrow checker, plus libraries, for Go, reflection, goroutines, and the GC, plus libraries.
Rust should get you slightly higher performance, but I'd worry that you couldn't hide the existence of the borrow checker from your toy language, especially if you wanted to interact with Rust libraries from YTL. If you wanted to learn something vaguely publishable/wider-interesting, that question right there ("can I compile a TL to Rust, touch the Rust libraries, and not expose the borrow checker? No+what-I-tried/Yes+this-worked") is not bad.
I have a minor conflict of interest suggesting Go; I work on Go, usually on the compiler, and machine-generated code makes great test data. But regarded as a VM, I am a little puzzled why it hasn't seen wider use, because the GC is great (for lower-allocation rates than Java however; JVM GC has higher throughout efficiency, but Go has tagless objects, interior pointer support, and tiny pause times. Go-the-language makes it pretty easy to allocate less.) Things Go-as-a-VM currently lacks:
- tail call elimination (JVM same)
What are some alternatives?
nimterop - Nimterop is a Nim package that aims to make C/C++ interop seamless
png-decoder - A pure-Rust, no_std compatible PNG decoder
futhark - Automatic wrapping of C headers in Nim
stb - stb single-file public domain libraries for C/C++
nimLUA - glue code generator to bind Nim and Lua together using Nim's powerful macro
csharplang - The official repo for the design of the C# programming language
cinterop - A C/C++ interop library for the Nim programming language
image-png - PNG decoding and encoding library in pure Rust
genny - Generate a shared library and bindings for many languages.
highway - Performance-portable, length-agnostic SIMD with runtime dispatch
tinycc - Unofficial mirror of mob development branch
kandria - A post-apocalyptic actionRPG. Now on Steam!