include-what-you-use VS rust-bindgen

Interesting...how does it compare to https://github.com/include-what-you-use/include-what-you-use ?

Build Insights in Visual Studio, include-what-you-use).

Looks like https://include-what-you-use.org/ might do that.

If you are worried about includes, use https://github.com/include-what-you-use/include-what-you-use and stop thinking about it.

Getting rid of that is not straightforard, though some tools can help with that

You can use the tool https://github.com/include-what-you-use/include-what-you-use to do this for for. It tracks included files and can give comment for what is used from each file. It also warns you when you include files that you don’t use

Invisible imports (e.g. traits). In Python, everything is fully namespaced (unless you from import * in which case all bets are off). It's always explicit where a name is coming from. C is the opposite: #include lets you refer to anything defined in the headers with no namespacing. That's why a common strategy (include what you use) has an associated code style: after every non-std #include you have a comment saying which of its definitions you are using. Of course, Rust is much less implicit, but I still sometimes struggle with traits. For example, you can use tokio::net::TcpStream, but you need to also use tokio::io::AsyncReadExt for the .read trait to be defined on TcpStream. This makes it hard (for me) to answer questions like "what traits are currently available in this scope?" and "why is this module being imported?"

Aside from being closed source and not available on all architectures, how does it compare to iwyu(https://include-what-you-use.org/) or clang's relatively recent include-fixer which is also accessible via clangd?

I set up include-what-you-use and I let it tell me which headers should be where. The IWYU rules would have put all needed headers including in the cpp file.

Rust supports two kinds of FFI: calling into Rust from another language; and calling into another language from Rust. Most of the thought and tooling that exists right now is organized around the second kind. For example, bindgen is a popular tool that generates useful Rust wrappers from a C or C++ header file.

I have looked into bindgen, but found that it would not be feasible due to OMPL not having a C API, just C++.

Yes! Are you running LLVM version 16.0.0 or newer, by any chance? I believe this is an issue with some builds of bindgen with newer versions of LLVM. See https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-bindgen/issues/2488

On native, you have to define a C API, probably using a header file. Even if both sides are implemented in Rust, they have to speak that C API (documentation).

Bindgen has some functionality for direct talk to C++ https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-bindgen

I am trying to use rust-bindgen (https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-bindgen) to link a static C library (say `libexample.a`) which is compiled in a separate project with CMake. The `libexample.a` depends on other libraries (for example `libcurl.a`) installed on the system.

It looks like the guy you're replying too was kind of an ass, but I do want to point out for anyone else reading that that's not actually that much of a technical limitation: rust code can natively call C code. The main thing you need is a translation of the C library's header file so rustc knows what C functions and structs exist, and that can be automatically generated with bindgen.

It's quite the different approach, but you could consider using bindgen instead.

Use bindgen or CXX to create Rust bindings for the C or C++ libraries.