Crystal Lib Support

Community
1

I have not used Crystal Lib for a while but coming back and trying to use it was a little bit of a pain.

  • The README might not be accurate
  • output is not what I remember it being
    • less helpful then before
  • PRs are not getting merged

This was a useful tool but is it still supported by the core team?

3 Likes
2

I like crystal_lib. Very useful tool. To the core team, please continue your development.

If you are making a C binding and want to parse C headers, there is a tool called c2ffi. This tool only outputs a JSON file. However, by reading the output JSON, you may be able to generate and validate bindings.

4 Likes
3

It is a great tool. I would love to use crystal_lib over other tools.

I have a branch that merges in some of the PRs but I still cannot get it to produce a binding for a project I picked up.

4

We tried unsuccessfully to find maintainers for it, as we have too much on our plate already.

5

Whoa, TIL this tool exists! I’ve been manually porting .h files like a noob.

2 Likes
6

crystal_lib is an experiment. It yielded practical results and I’m sure it can utilized for many use cases. However, it’s currently not advancing any further to reach a productive stage. There are limitations to this approach for generating lib bindings, and there are more promising approaches such as [RFC] C bindings helper · Issue #8307 · crystal-lang/crystal · GitHub.

At this stage, crystal_lib is not a priority of the Core Team. We do not have the resources to continue these efforts. But any help is welcome. We’d be happy to transfer this project to a new maintainer.

3 Likes