rust-cpp VS rust-bindgen

I am the current passive maintainer of the cpp crate: https://github.com/mystor/rust-cpp

I would like to utilize OMPL's functionality in Rust code, so I want to call into OMPL C++ code somehow in Rust. I've seen two (non-mutually-exclusive) options so far: - rust-cpp, which allows you to write C++ code in Rust within the cpp!() macro. - cxx, which allows you to define both sides of the FFI boundary manually (as opposed to bindgen's automatic generation).

There's also the cpp and cxx crates for doing C++/Rust interop, but they probably aren't appropriate to use in all cases. The C ABI is definitely the safest way to go unless you're really trying to marry Rust and C++ code bases, not just writing library bindings.

https://github.com/mystor/rust-cpp <- not a transpiler, but almost as good

Otherwise, C would never have achieved success in MS-DOS when all the stuff it was binding to at the time required blocks of inline assembly. (Crates like rust-cpp do exist, which allow "inline C++" in the same way that C++ allows inline assembly.)

Actually, you can make inline C++ macro in Rust. Similar unholy monstrosities exist for inline python, inline C, inline SQL, inline HTML,...

Here is a more serious project that allows to embed C++ code directly in your Rust code: https://github.com/mystor/rust-cpp

Don't underestimate the power of procedural macros: https://github.com/mystor/rust-cpp

Alright, thanks for all your ideas! I also found this mystor/rust-cpp, which apparently allows inline c++ as opposed to cxx. Having yet to try out any of these, I like the idea of inline code more. Thought now I feel I need to brush up my skills a bit more to try this stuff out.

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.