Re: Official Linux system wrapper library?

Paul Eggert
2018-11-14T18:13:12Z

On 11/14/18 9:40 AM, Joseph Myers wrote:
> Historically, there was once an attempt to rework POSIX into a separate
> language-independent definition and language bindings (for C, Fortran, Ada
> etc.), but I don't think it got anywhere, and it's probably doubtful
> whether the idea was ever very practical.

That effort did produce IEEE Std 1003.5-1992 (Ada Bindings to IEEE Std
1003.1-1990), IEEE 1003.5b-1996 (Ada bindings for realtime extensions),
and IEEE Std 1003.9-1992 (F77 Bindings to IEEE Std 1003.1-1992). The Ada
group simply translated the POSIX standard from C into Ada, repeating
functional text and coming up with a "thick" standard; in contrast the
Fortran group did a "thin" standard that focused on Fortran mechanics
and deferred underlying functionality to the main POSIX standard. The
thin Fortran standard was harder to grok and was less successful in
practice.

As you write, these efforts were probably not worth the trouble. Non-C
language systems can provide a standard way to invoke C APIs, and then
let user-level programmers have at it. The performance advantage of
having a pure Ada/Fortran/etc. API for POSIX are so minor that it's not
worth the major hassle of standardizing and using a language-independent
POSIX API.