JNA VS sokol-samples

As far as I understand it, with JNA, all calls into C code go through libffi: https://github.com/java-native-access/jna/blob/master/www/Fu...

This means that every call sets up some libffi data structures and libffi uses this information to perform the native call. Likewise in the other direction for return values. With JNI (and Panama), Hotspot can directly emit the argument/return code a the call, not too dissimilar from what a C or C++ compiler would do. There is still some overhead from maintaining JVM invariants. For example, I think a thread blocked in an FFI call can still participate in a safepoint. But that applies to JNI as well.

If you were prepared to go to the JVM you might try JNA. https://github.com/java-native-access/jna

Other good example, but for Java platform is JNA library. Do not mix it with Java's JNI, which is a bad example of how it could be done.

In case you haven't used it (assuming that you already know about JNI, for comparison) - https://github.com/java-native-access/jna is about as easy as it gets for native interop. Also, as mentioned in another comment, with the Java FFM (Foreign Function and Memory) API already in preview mode, pretty soon, there will be no external dependencies at all, and Java should be able to interop with any language that can talk to C.

The complexity of JNI has given rise to some community-driven libraries that make it simpler to do FFI in Java. Java Native Access (JNA) is one of them. It's built on top of JNI and at least makes FFI easier to use, especially as it removes the need to write any C binding code manually and reduces the chances of memory safety issues. Still, it has some of the disadvantages of being JNI-based and is slightly slower than JNI in many cases. However, JNA is widely used and battle-tested, so definitely a better option than using JNI directly.

This is about calling into any native operating system APIs, as long as they are callable via C or C++ (which these days means "all" operating system APIs).

JNI is somewhat harder to use, because you need custom glue on both sides of the border: Some custom classes in Java and some custom code on the C (and C++) side.

This proposal would remove the need for the glue on the C side and would allow a pure java solution.

Something like this has existed in third-party form for a while as JNA (https://github.com/java-native-access/jna), but now it's going to be built into the JRE itself (if the proposal passes through review)

I use JNA https://github.com/java-native-access/jna , as you can write the entire interface in Java faster as well as easier without the need of messing with the complexities of JNI.

Zig currently doesn't allow chained designators and also doesn't allow to partially initialize arrays and fill up the rest of the array with default values.

E.g. the closest Zig equivalent to this C99 code:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/b3bc55c4411fa03...

...is this:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-zig/blob/a4b3c287fadd153a504...

...note how part of the initialization had to be moved out into "code".

There's a ticket about this here, but it's currently not high-priority:

https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/6068

This is a simple Pong-like I've written in Raylib compiled to WASM - https://wasm-stuff.netlify.app/pong

Source code is here: https://github.com/rrampage/skitter/tree/master/pong-raylib

It is fairly straightforward to get Raylib running in the browser. I used @flohofwoe's HTML shell file ( https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/master/webpage/... ).

PS: also if shader functions could be directly defined "inline" in regular CPU code (and behind a special function pointer type), there would be no need for string literal shenanigans like this:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/3f10c1a0620cec9...

(and shader compilation would happen during the regular build and would also generate regular compiler errors - with current toolchains that's only possible with a lot of build system magic)

I think something along those lines (rarely used...) was also given by the C++ Committee as justification why so much of the C99 designated init feature set was left out of C++20. But in reality, all C99 designated-init 'sub-features' complement each other nicely once you start using them. It's a great way for building 'data-driven' APIs.

For instance check out this call to create a 3D-API pipeline-state-object in C99:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/ad9047e228a8441...

I'm using anonymous nested structs extensively for grouping struct items, but I consider the extra field name a feature, not something that should be hidden:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/bfb30ea00b5948f...

(also note the 'inplace initialization' which follows the state struct definition using C99's designated initialization)

It's an STB-style single-file library, which means the implementation is in a separate ifdef-block from the interface declarations, this allows to compile the implemenentation in a separate source file (which can be a C file), and be used in different source files (which can be C++ files).

For example (using stb_image.h):

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/master/libs/stb...

C99 has made all that a lot easier, you can setup, initialize a struct and call the function taking a pointer to that struct all in one call:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/89f5825ab5d3690...

The Win32 window system functions and D3D11 are actually very convenient to work with in C99, better than C++ actually.