# haxe-ui
- b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:00 PMi feel like generating these externs is gonna be a huge PITA - even if its a pretty simple, well defined, lib but writing them by hand would be so much worse - p
powerful-morning-89
12/10/2021, 9:02 PM
=> definitely a PITA, trust me, I've tried (for vulkan).generating externs
=> also a PITA Wouldn't say writing them by hand is much worse. It just takes time.writing them by hand - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:02 PMyeah, there are alot of functions though, and just writing the glue and the .hx for these 5 took me the best part of 2-3 hours - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:03 PMi was considering doing the same for wxWidgets... ... i kinda feel like that idea is evaporating 😄 - p
powerful-morning-89
12/10/2021, 9:03 PMWell, experience does help, I could probably do it a lot faster. - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:03 PMyeah, likely, there was a learning curve, for sure - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:05 PMtbh, with raylib, i dont really see a reason why i couldnt generate them - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:05 PMnothing is hugely complex - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:05 PMif i were writing them by hand there would be ALOT of a monkey work, so i think i can just get the computer to do that for me - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:05 PM... im and little unsure of how the array access and ** work - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:06 PMbut i guess that best way is to just handwrite that - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:06 PM(in order to understand how to generate it) - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:07 PMideally, i should be able to run this in HL with zero changes: https://github.com/haxeui/raylib-haxe/blob/main/examples/postprocessing/src/Main.hx - p
powerful-morning-89
12/10/2021, 9:07 PMOne of the problems with generating things is that just the headers don't have the information to know if
is an array, a reference, or an "object". With eg vulkan that's less of a problem because the registry contains all that information in a machine-readable form.X * - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:07 PMthis type of stuff im not sure about:model.materials[0].maps[MaterialMapIndex.ALBEDO].texture = texture; - p
powerful-morning-89
12/10/2021, 9:10 PMAh, that's gonna be a problem, because hashlink does not deal with raw structs at the moment. So you'll need some wrapper functions + abstracts with operator overloads. - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:11 PMright, i was assuming id need some wrappers - p
powerful-morning-89
12/10/2021, 9:11 PM(eg
would be fine, butMesh **
isn't, when it's meant as an array)Mesh * - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:11 PMyeah, i think its Mesh* - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:12 PM... it is - p
powerful-morning-89
12/10/2021, 9:14 PMI'll see if I can do something about stack struct support sometime in the hopefully near future. - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:15 PMso one thing i think we can say conclusively is that writing externs for hxcpp is much simpler than writing externs for HL... there is defo a huge difference - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:15 PMi get why there is, but it does cause friction, so i get why lublak gets frustrated - p
powerful-morning-89
12/10/2021, 9:16 PMDepends. Interacting with C++ from haxe is easyish. Interacting with hxcpp stuff from C++ is a pain in my experience. - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:17 PMright, thats fair, but i think generally 90% of extern libs are just using some external lib (ie haxe -> lib) - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:17 PMits also a real shame they cant be unified in someway - b
bright-gpu-74537
12/10/2021, 9:18 PMlike some type of IDL that can be built that can then generate all the bits for "all" haxe targets (or the ones that make sense) - p
powerful-morning-89
12/10/2021, 9:18 PMWell, they can't be unified in a way that Robert will like. Robert likes being able to inject arbitrary C code into haxe. With hashlink that's not possible. - p
powerful-morning-89
12/10/2021, 9:18 PM - p
powerful-morning-89
12/10/2021, 9:19 PMThat only works for hashlink though. But it's quite close to your idea.